Into My Work
by Lysana
Summary: Cinna/Katniss. After his capture, Cinna faces torture and interrogation - but the brave young stylist survives. A person like Cinna does not just quietly disappear. But life in Panem doesn't stand still for one man's personal ordeal. The Capitol children's Hunger Games CANNOT be allowed to happen! And Rue, Clove, Foxface and some of the others from the 74th Games are still alive...
1. Chapter 1

_"Don't worry._  
_I always channel my emotions into my work._  
_That way I don't hurt anyone but myself."_

-Cinna  
_Catching Fire_

* * *

Author's Note:

Warning! Although this story is not particularly graphic, a lot of it can be very intense and scary. I'm dealing head-on with the concept of prolonged physical torture, as well as a great deal of emotional suffering and fear. That's not because I like these things. I don't. It's because I think they're inevitably what Cinna would have been facing after he was arrested. When you're a hero of the rebellion in a world as savage as Panem, it can get pretty rough.

If you've read the books, you shouldn't have a problem with the depictions of violence _per se_ in my story. I don't think any of my descriptions of physical injury are as bad as what they said about Cato's torture by the mutts, for instance.

But on an emotional level, and especially if you've only seen the movies, please be careful. I am not playing around here. My purpose with the scary scenes is to throw you straight into Cinna's experience. If I succeed... it could be kind of hard to read.

It's hard for me to write.

Still, I hope you'll decide to read this. I'm telling a story that's important to me. And I'm doing my best to tell it in a way that is no more painful than it needs to be.

No more, no less.

And it _does_ have a good ending. Please trust me.

I love Cinna and Katniss far too much to write any other kind.

* * *

**Dedication:**

For Holly,  
for knowing what I meant when I described my concept of Cinna.  
For seeing what I saw when I showed you my drawings of him.  
For your reaction to my sketches of his work.  
For taking one look at my sketch of _him_ and saying,  
_"He's that simple."_  
And more than anything,  
for watching the _Catching Fire_ movie and then saying,_  
"He better not die."_  
You get it, Holly.  
Thank you.

* * *

**Part 1: "Design"**

* * *

~ [Cinna's POV] ~

_"Cinna! Cinna!"_

I can hear her screaming my name as if the glass wasn't there. Even though there's no actual sound, I hear her panicked voice in my mind as Katniss pounds frantically against the inside of her cylinder and throws herself against it so hard I'm afraid she might break her bones.

Her silver-gray eyes lock desperately on me. I barely feel my own pain as the Peacekeepers continue to beat me with their spiked gloves.

It only lasts a few seconds. I'm looking at Katniss, but I can't think of anything to say or do before I lose my awareness.

* * *

I wake up in a square white room. I am chained to a hard chair with my hands behind me. There is a man standing in front of me. He's wearing the white uniform of a Peacekeeper on his body, and a hard gray glint in his eyes.

I blink, fighting disorientation. I shake my head slightly, and a slamming pain strikes the side of my skull as if they're hitting me again. But it's just from the earlier blows and my own movement.

Carefully, I hold myself still. Moving is not a good idea right now.

"Hello, Cinna," the Peacekeeper says in a cold voice. He doesn't introduce himself. "You made quite a stir at the interviews."

He's talking about the Mockingjay dress I made for Katniss. At the thought of her, a cold pain shoots through my heart. _Katniss!_ I expected to be arrested. I expected to be tortured, probably killed, for my part in the newborn rebellion. What I didn't expect was for them to inflict it on Katniss too.

I remember the agony in her eyes when she saw them arrest me and beat me. I know that's why the Gamemakers delayed her launch into the arena. I know they did it this way just to hurt her.

A hot rage fills me. Still, I answer calmly. "Yes, I thought it was spectacular myself."

The Peacekeeper grabs my right shoulder and shakes me. The seemingly simple action sends waves of pain shooting through me. I gasp, then make an effort and contain my reaction.

"Don't play games, Cinna!" he snarls. "You don't have to tell me anything. At least not now. You'll tell us everything soon enough."

I see the glint of silver as a syringe with a long needle appears in his free hand. Before I can react, he plunges the needle into my left arm and I slip away.

* * *

It's all sort of fuzzy when I start to be aware of things again. I'm not sure at first what's going on. But I feel a subtle sense of unease. This is not quite right.

Cautiously I look around. My mind is slowly starting to ask questions about what's happening. Where am I? This is not my home. I'm not waking up in my own bed.

A cold sense of alarm touches my heart as I start to remember. I was arrested by Peacekeepers. Katniss had to watch. I'm...

I'm suddenly completely awake. I have been taken into custody for questioning about my presentation of Katniss as the Mockingjay.

It's starting.

My physical surroundings are coming into focus. I am lying on my back on a hard table. My hands are restrained at my sides. I can feel that some kind of hard cuffs around my ankles are also holding my feet in place. There's a stiff band of some material running across the front of my shoulders and my upper chest, holding me flat on the table.

It's a surprisingly vulnerable feeling, being trapped in this position. I feel a sudden fear rising in me. I can't get up. I can't do anything at all to protect myself. Of course I knew they were going to hurt me, but the actual feeling of being restrained like this is surprisingly terrifying. It was one thing to imagine being tortured, but now I'm face to face with the reality that _I won't be able to move my body _to avoid the pain they're going to cause me. It seems obvious now, but somehow my mind never prepared me for this.

I stare up at the blank white ceiling, fighting to calm my thoughts and slow my racing heartbeat. It's been years since I've felt this scared, if I ever have. Maybe in some nightmare as a very small child.

_All right,_ I think. _I am here. I need to face this._ The first thing is to focus on something other than fear. I lift my head, turning my face to look at the strap across my shoulders. It's black and shiny, about two inches across and fairly thick. Probably some kind of plastic.

The movements of my head are not causing me any pain. I remember the sudden, slamming agony when I shook my head to clear it before. That earlier savage blow was hard enough to be probably very dangerous, and certainly did me some serious damage. Now there's no sign of the effects.

The Peacekeepers weren't doing any of this at random. They've kept me under long enough for my head injury to heal. Probably with the help of some expensive medicines to speed it up. Apparently they want to hurt me when I can concentrate on feeling it.

Does it matter to them that now I can also concentrate on resisting them?

Probably not. I suspect they feel very confident about this. But maybe it should matter to them. It does seem that they have all the power here, and they do have a great deal of power. But they're only looking at one side of it. I can bring my own kind of strength to this challenge.

I decide to start now.

"All right," I say, breaking the silence in this ominous room. "You may as well come in now. I'm ready."

My voice sounds quiet and calm. I'm pleased to hear that. At the same time, I realize that I don't feel as much fear as before. Thinking about these things has helped me to regain my usual calm and confidence.

No one comes into the room. I'm guessing they didn't like my small demonstration of control. I have no doubt they'll be here soon, though.

I raise my head again, looking along the length of my body. My comfortable black clothes have been exchanged for some thin, blue-white garment like a hospital gown.

I suppose that what is convenient for medical procedures would also be convenient for torture.

The thought brings my fear seeping back into my mind. I find myself shifting my arms, trying to pull my wrists free of the unyielding cuffs. It's no use, of course. They're meant to hold me against any attempts to escape.

There's the sound of a door opening behind me. I try to twist around and look, but I can't turn that far. I only have to wait a few seconds, though. I hear the heavy footsteps of a man wearing boots. He's coming around me on my right.

A uniformed Peacekeeper steps into view. Not really to my surprise, he's the same one who briefly questioned me before.

"Feeling better, Cinna?" he asks in a slightly sarcastic voice. But there's nothing remotely amused in his set expression or the hard look in his eyes.

I consider what might be the best way to answer.

"No," I say finally. "You and I both know that's not the point." I look him in the eye. "My head is very much improved, though. Thank you for the medicine," I add with a slight touch of irony.

"Good," he says shortly. "Now we need to talk." He's dropped all pretense at humor. He told me before not to play games. Apparently he's done playing them himself. At least for now.

"You'll find that unproductive," I tell him coldly. "I have nothing to say that you'll be interested in."

At that, he smiles cruelly. "Oh, you have plenty to say, Cinna," he tells me in a tone that implies he's correcting my statement. "You just aren't interested in saying it. Yet."

I shake my head. "I have no problem with telling you the truth," I answer him. "Especially since you already know. Where would you like me to start? I've spent my life watching our government hurt people. I got sick of it years ago. I finally found something to do that I thought could make a difference. No matter what you do to me now, there's a chance that what I've done may inspire people to fight hard enough to break free. I'm okay with paying the price for that chance."

The Peacekeeper slowly shakes his head, chuckling quietly deep in his throat. It seems I've amused him again.

"Very nice," he says. "A full confession, right off the starting platform. But you know that's not what I'm looking for. Rebels never work alone. I want to know what else you know about what's going on in Panem."

"Get used to surprises," I tell him. "Study my career a little. I never do anything according to the book. My idea was mine. That dress I made for Katniss? I made it by myself. Not even she knew about it. Didn't you see how surprised she looked?"

I'm lying, of course. Except for the part about Katniss not knowing. That much is true. I would never have allowed anyone to put her at risk by giving her that kind of information ahead of time. I've been working closely with Haymitch and Plutarch and the other rebels, though, and even with District 13. But there's no way I'm going to let him find out any of that.

At least, I fervently hope there isn't. I still don't know for sure what will happen when my pain starts.

"Enough of this," the hard-eyed Peacekeeper says. "I've heard this kind of talk so many times I can't keep track. I've never failed to get someone past it. Now how difficult do you really want to make this? Wouldn't you rather just tell me now?"

My heart is pounding. I think I still look reasonably calm, though. There's nothing I can see a point in saying to him at the moment. I just stare him in the eyes and hope he can see how unimpressed I am with his air of mock-civilized brutality.

_Mock-civilized brutality..._ That, I reflect, would also be a very good description of the Hunger Games.

The Peacekeeper searches my face for a moment. Then he turns and walks to a part of the room I can't see. I hear a key turning in a lock, then the sound of what must be a metal drawer opening. There is some ominous clanking. After a minute, the man walks back into my view.

I can't tear my eyes away from what he's holding in his hands. It _is_ a drawer, a small flat one; he's pulled the whole thing out of its cabinet or wherever it was. The steel is enameled a dark, hard green. It looks like something from a tool chest. Maybe that isn't so far from the truth.

The drawer is filled with all sorts of horrible, terrifying items. They're carefully laid out on an ironically bright, crisp-looking white cloth. Like fancy utensils in a kitchen. But there's nothing fancy or pleasant about these items.

It's nowhere near being a surprise. Still, it's horrifying enough to take my breath away.

These are instruments of torture.

I can't even guess the purposes of some of them. Others are obvious enough. There are sharp, curved and deeply serrated knives, there are awful things that look designed to crush and keep crushing, there are... I shiver and look away. I don't even want to know what else there is.

There's a terrible sound of satisfaction in the Peacekeeper's voice when he speaks again. Too late, I realize that I've shown him my fear.

"This is what I meant by making things difficult," he says. He's trying to sound reasonable, but there's an undercurrent of cruelty in his voice that makes any such attempt impossible.

Fighting my terror, I look back at him. I try to avoid seeing his torture weapons again, but my eyes keep being drawn back to them.

He can see that far too clearly. He smiles. His hard, cruel mouth looks even harder and crueler that way. "I'd really prefer that we didn't have to use these," he says.

_Liar,_ I think, but I don't say it. I can read the look on his face. _You love your job._ How can someone actually like hurting people? It's incomprehensible to me. Apparently this man loves it enough to build his life and his career around it.

Suddenly I find myself thinking of Clove, the fierce girl from Two who threatened to torture Katniss in last year's Games. If she had lived, would she have ended up with this man's job? Would the Capitol have taken her and trained her to coldly hurt others for a living? The thought makes me inexpressibly sad. She could have been such a sweet girl, but instead she was trained from childhood to be cruel. Then she died.

I look up at the hard-eyed Peacekeeper with the cruel smirk on his face, the drawer full of horrors in his hands. For a moment I lose my fear in wondering what kind of childhood _he_ might have had.

"Are you sure, Cinna?" he asks me, bringing my mind back to the terrible danger I'm facing right now.

I swallow hard, staring into his eyes. "I don't have anything else to tell you," I say. I feel sick with fear, but I'm proud that I've managed to keep my voice from shaking.

"Then we'll have to see if I can change your mind," he says with a cursory attempt at a tone of regret. He tilts the drawer of weapons toward me, drawing my eyes more than ever. "Which do you think?" he asks me in a cruel voice. He's toying with me. "Which would you use?"

That was not an effective thing to ask me. I have a clear answer, and it steadies my thoughts. I raise my chin a little and look at him, completely ignoring the awful drawer now.

"None of them," I say firmly. "I would never hurt anyone this way."

He frowns. "I see," he says slowly. "Well, it's fortunate that I don't have that problem. Very well. Let's see if I can be done with this job by dinnertime."

With a massive effort of will, I keep my eyes focused on his face. I can see his hand moving at the edges of my vision, reaching into the drawer. I won't look at it. My hearing tells me that he's picking up and setting down several of the nightmare devices, considering which one to choose first. Still, I won't look. When I see his arm moving to hold up the weapon he's chosen in front of my face, I close my eyes.

"What?" the Peacekeeper asks, sounding actually a little bit surprised. "You don't want to know what to expect?" I hear what must be the sound of him setting the drawer down on the floor. Then his left hand comes down heavily on my right shoulder. "I think you'd better look, Cinna."

I can't decide if it's a good idea, but I'm feeling such a strong urge to look that it doesn't seem worth resisting any more. Trembling inside, fighting to keep it from showing, I open my eyes.

It's a short, viciously sharp knife with a jagged blade. He's holding it half an arm's length in front of my face. I can see every point, every valley, of the serrations. I imagine that I can already feel them cutting into my body.

"You see?" he asks. "Wouldn't it be easier to just talk to me now, without all this?"  
"I do not," I say quietly, "have anything else to say to you. I told you. I made that Mockingjay dress on my own. I'm proud of it. I would do it again. It doesn't matter what you do to me, because I've already done my best to help Panem believe it can be free."

He nods, looking totally unsurprised. He doesn't say anything else. I guess he feels that there's no need. He walks around to the other side of the table and stops, standing beside my left leg.

I can't decide whether to watch or not. Both choices scare me so much it's hard to even breathe. Finally, I decide not to look. I can always change my mind and watch later, if it helps.

I close my eyes.

There's a sudden sensation on the front of my lower leg, halfway between my knee and my ankle. I twitch reflexively in anticipation of pain, but it's only his big, callused left hand touching my skin. His thumb moves quickly, searching, then finds a spot and presses down. With cold horror, I realize what he's doing. He's using that pressure to slow down how much I'll bleed.

At least that gives me a second to prepare by knowing where the pain will be. But when it comes, it's so sharp and savage that it catches me completely off guard.

I clench my teeth against a scream of pain. Before this moment I never thought about it, but I'm suddenly determined not to let him get a sound out of me. I'm not sure why. It just feels important somehow. I think it has to do with my dignity and with the question of how much he has the ability to control me.

Maybe when he isn't hurting me so badly I'll be able to figure it out. Right now it's taking all I have to keep my teeth closed and my breathing somewhat even.

My leg jerks involuntarily, fighting on its own to be free of the pain he's causing. It's no use. The hard metal cuff holds my ankle firmly in place. The movements caused by my body's reflexes only add to the pain by making that jagged knife dig in more deeply. My torturer is surely well aware of this, and I imagine it pleases him greatly.

This is very bad. He's barely started, and I know he's going to escalate his violence as time goes by. And it's already very hard for me to stand it. So what am I going to do when it gets worse?

I don't know. I can't think about that right now. All I can do is focus on enduring this pain, this minute that I'm experiencing _now_.

* * *

It feels like half an hour later when the Peacekeeper pauses in his attack. I suspect it has really been less than five minutes. The small injured patch on my leg is sparking and sizzling with pain, even now that he's lifted away the knife. I can feel the little crisscrossing cuts that he made so slowly, carefully placing each of them to cause me as much pain as possible. I feel the small, cooling droplets and tiny streams of blood on my skin around the cuts.

This man is very good at his job.

He looks at me curiously, holding the knife loosely and casually in his hand. "A silent one," he says with a certain amount of interest. "I've heard that before too, believe it or not. It doesn't usually last very long."

I take a deep breath, in and out. I think my control is steady enough to let me talk without compromising myself. "Get used," I tell him icily one more time, "to surprises."

He laughs. It's a hard sound. "You're an interesting one," he tells me. "You might be a challenge. That's good. Sometimes I've been feeling that my work is too easy, of late."

The sheer unfeeling callousness of his words makes my heart twist inside me. How can anyone be like this? How, no matter what he's seen or faced or been taught in his life, can he be so very cold and cruel?

He starts cutting me again, and my breath hisses sharply between my teeth. He didn't give me any warning. _I'll have to watch out for that,_ I decide, making a mental note. _He's going to use surprise to attack me, too._

Again, I find myself having to fight hard to keep from making any sounds of pain. Then, much sooner than I expected, the methodical cutting stops again. What is he thinking?

The swift, sudden pressure of his thumb warns me a fraction of a second before the pain starts again. My resolve not to cry out is tested by the unexpected new slashes of agony - in my right leg this time.

He's switched sides.

I'm having an alarming amount of trouble keeping myself even outwardly calm and quiet, and my heart is racing again. For some reason, coming out of nowhere like this in an unexpected spot, the new wounds he's inflicting seem to be even more painful.

There has to be something I can do to distract myself from the terrible slicing pain. Some way to make it easier for me to get through this. _I need to think about something else..._

I find my thoughts reaching back to my last meeting with my fellow rebels. It was a few days ago, as far as I can tell without knowing how long I've been kept under sedation. The day before the interviews for the Quarter Quell.

We were gathered in Portia's sitting room, one of the only places in the Capitol where we could feel confident that there wouldn't be any cameras. Portia has far too much sense and perceptiveness to allow anything like that to go unnoticed in her home.

It was a small meeting. Haymitch, Plutarch, Portia and I were the only ones there. Anything larger might have raised too much suspicion. And we didn't have too much left to discuss. Most of the plans were already in place. I'd given my book of Mockingjay uniform sketches to Haymitch a week earlier. The uniforms themselves had been smuggled out to Thirteen, a few at a time, over the past month.

My prep team was set to leave the next day, right after their final session with Katniss and definitely before the interviews. I wasn't going to risk them. It was a great relief to me, knowing the danger I myself faced, to know that they would soon be out of harm's way in District 13. I wouldn't be able to bear the idea of anyone hurting my innocent, kindhearted, somewhat naive team over _my_ personal acts of rebellion.

"Are you sure about this, Cinna?" Portia asked me with deep concern. "You're really putting yourself on the line here. We could still pull you out of the Capitol right after you present Katniss as the Mockingjay."

"No," I said firmly. "Thank you, Portia. But there will be too much attention on me after the interviews. I have to stay here. Any attempt to move me out would put the rest of you at too much of a risk."

Portia's eyes were sad as she looked at me. _What about the risk to _you,_ Cinna?_ I imagined her saying. But she respected the dignity of my right to choose, and didn't say it aloud.

"I think that's a good strategy," Plutarch said soberly. "I hate to say it, but you're right. I can't see any other realistic way of pulling this off than by you staying here."

I nodded. "Right. This is what we decided, and I think it's still what we need to do."

Next, I turned to Haymitch. "What about Katniss?" I asked him. "Are there any plans to help her in the arena?"

"We can't tell you very much, Cinna," Haymitch said bluntly. "Not about that, and not about any other details of our plans for the larger rebellion from here out. Because you're going to be tortured for information."

I had been trying not to think about that. _Leave it to Haymitch,_ I thought,_ to hammer the obvious down onto the table at every opportunity._

"I understand," I answered calmly, not letting my apprehension show. "I don't think I would tell them, but I can't be sure. We can't take that risk. The less I know, the better."

It felt strange to be coldly discussing my own torture and whether or not I would break. It feels even stranger now, remembering it while this hard-eyed man is actually torturing me.

At least so far, I was right about one thing. I haven't broken yet. And I'm still determined not to tell him anything.

But I didn't expect it to be anywhere near this hard to endure. Being tortured hurts a lot more than I was able to imagine.

* * *

Author's Note:

I'm committing to post one chapter of _Into My Work_ at least every two weeks until it's finished. I've never done something like that before, but now NaNoWriMo has taught me how to write for a deadline and love it.

This story will be novel-length. I don't know how many chapters it will be, but I'm guessing at least 30. Still, I already have (thanks to NaNo) 45,850 words of it written out of order, and I expect a lot of my chapters will come much closer together than two weeks.

Chapter Two is already finished. I'll be posting it this weekend.

Don't worry. Cinna's in for a rough ride, but I love him and I won't let him be anything but all right in the end. Katniss too. I love her just as much. And - in my story, anyway! - they love each other, and the only way either of them can be all right is if they both are.

So they will be. You'll see.

* * *

_"Everything will be all right in the end.  
__So if it is not all right, then it is not yet the end."_

-A verse from the Bhagavad Gita  
_As quoted in the movie "Life of Pi"_


	2. Chapter 2

Author's Note:

[UPDATE: I'm sorry I don't have my audio version or my drawings posted yet. Been really tired and writing scenes for _Into My Work_ almost every waking minute. I'll try to get those things posted soon, though, and I'll put a notice here when I have. Again, sorry!]

Would you like to hear this story read aloud in Cinna's voice? Cinna's voice as portrayed by me, that is. I'm posting (for free, of course!) an audiobook version of _Into My Work_ on my website, AudioFanfictionLibrary dot Com. Please go check it out! Just go to the site's main page, then the Hunger Games section. This story will be right there.

I'm also posting drawings for this story on my DeviantArt account. You can find me there as Lysana2124. So far, I have a partly-colored-in portrait of Cinna as I see him, and five of his design sketches for outfits he made in the canon books. Again, as I see them.

I imagine Cinna's work, as well as Cinna himself, very differently from the way they were shown in the movies. Although movieverse _was_ awesome in its own right. :) But what can I say? My ideas were formed by my reading of the books before I ever saw the movies. For one thing, my Cinna is a lot younger than he seemed in the movies. At the time this fanfic starts, I figure he's twenty-three years old.

* * *

Somehow I've made it through what must have been hours. There are wounds in several places on my body now, each one throbbing with the harsh, loud echoes of a different kind of pain. They're not just knife wounds. The Peacekeeper has been experimenting with several of his tools.

I suppose he isn't experimenting. I'm sure he knows exactly what each of them does, just as I know the purposes and effects of all the tools in my own creative kits.

The comparison sickens me. It _isn't_ just like it! It's _nothing_ like it. I use my tools for beauty. This man uses his for cruelty, to cause pain and fear.

A vicious pain in my left arm, below the shoulder, slams my thoughts to a halt. I'm still not looking. My eyes are closed. I don't want to know any more about what's happening than my screaming nerves are telling me. But the terrible crushing and tearing sensation brings me a level of horror beyond the pain. If I do survive all this, how badly damaged will I be?

I'm afraid for Katniss, too. I'm not the only one in a situation that's going to be very hard to survive. She's back in the arena, and this time the Gamemakers are no doubt explicitly planning to kill her.

Even the thought of Katniss can't entirely keep my thoughts away from the pain I'm feeling in my arm. The agony is breathtakingly intense. I can't feel much blood coming from the injury. He must be using one of his twisting and crushing tools...

I don't want to think about it. I don't want to imagine what the wound looks like. But it's a lot harder for my mind to turn away than for my eyes.

Finally I can't stand it anymore and I have to look. The images I'm creating in my mind can't be any less terrible than what's actually there. And it's dividing my attention too much, to resist looking and resist crying out at the same time.

Slowly, fighting to look less frightened than I am, I open my eyes. I turn my head to look at the wound he's causing me.

It's fascinating. That's the first thought that strikes me, taking me totally by surprise in the middle of my pain and my terror. There's a deep bruise spreading out from where the Peacekeeper's weapon is twisting my flesh. Layers of purple and blue, with thin streaks of blue-tinged red and a surprisingly sunny yellow lancing across it.

What am I thinking? This is horrible. But at the same time there's an artistic fascination that I just can't deny.

My thoughts are cut off when the Peacekeeper sees my gaze and stops. He does something with the brutal weapon in his hand. The device releases its twisting grip on the flesh of my arm. I feel a wash of relief as the pain lessens.

My torturer steps back a pace and looks thoughtfully at me, meeting my eyes.

"Well, Cinna," he says. "Not very pretty, is it?"

The question feels odd, considering what I've just experienced at the sight of this newest wound. _No,_ I think, _it's not. But it _is_ compelling._

When I don't answer him aloud, he frowns. "Still silent, eh? Are you sure you really don't want to talk to me? We could cut this off right now and you wouldn't have to face any more of it."

His voice goes horribly soft. At the same time, it's colder than any voice I've ever heard, except the voice of President Snow.

"I know you've never experienced anything like this, Cinna," he says almost kindly. The false note of sympathy in his voice sets my teeth on edge. "You've led a very privileged life. You grew up here in the Capitol, after all. You've been protected. You've never been hurt like this, and certainly never had a way to really prepare yourself for it."

I feel a chill going through me at the truth of his words. His sinister motivation is obvious, but he's describing my life exactly. It's true. I never have been hurt like this, or really been physically hurt much at all. Certainly, no one has ever deliberately caused me pain before today.

"Why don't you just let go, Cinna?" the Peacekeeper asks me, as softly as the icy touch of death against my face. "Tell me everything. I'll stop hurting you. There'd be no reason, once I know what I need to know."

_No, there wouldn't,_ I think. _Because then you could hurt Haymitch, and Portia, and all my other friends in the rebellion. It would never end. You'd do your best to crush Panem back beneath your fist, and people I love would be tortured and die._

Still, I think, maybe I can use this. There's no way I'll ever tell him about the rebellion, but I can try to take advantage of his moment of false compassion by doing a little acting of my own.

"Believe me," I say tiredly, "if I knew anything else I would tell you. I only had an idea. I thought it could do some good in Panem, and I tried it. I'm here because of it. The Mockingjay dress was mine. No one else was involved. There's nothing else I can tell you, unless you want me to explain the technique of stitching layers of feathers onto fabric."

I have to smile a little inside at that one. It feels good to assert my identity as a stylist. And I think it's surprised him, because his eyes widen a fraction and he looks a little taken aback at my mention of feathers and sewing.

It doesn't hold his attention for long, though. He nods coldly, absorbing the rest of what I've said.

"Very well," he tells me, back in his usual hard, cruel, torturer's voice. "I think I'm going to stop for today. We got a late start because of your head injury. It took several hours to heal that up before we could let you wake. It's only been two hours since I started, but I'm getting tired. I want to go home and eat and go to bed."

My first thought is one of relief that, at least for now, the pain is going to stop for a while. Then my mind focuses on something that makes me feel an awful cold inside, so that I want to start shaking with the chill.

Two hours? I had guessed at least five.

The Peacekeeper carefully wipes off the surface of his twisting weapon with a small square of white cloth. Small streaks of red come away on the fabric. Even though it was mostly a bruising attack, I guess I did still bleed a little.

Then, turning away, he carries his drawer of violent implements back out of my sight. My hearing tells me that he's putting it away. I hear the click of the lock as he secures the metal cabinet. Then his footsteps, again, as he walks to the door.

Just before leaving the room, he pauses. "Good night, Cinna," he says in a hard voice. I hear a small, sharp _snap_ of plastic on plastic.

It's the light switch. He's shut it off, and there is not a single glimmer of light to be seen in the room anymore.

He opens the door, letting in a path of light again from the hallway. I catch one last glimpse of the spreading bruise on my arm. Then he steps out through the door, closes it and locks it behind him, leaving me in darkness.

* * *

I wake up with my heart pounding. It's still completely dark in the room. I can't believe I'm going to be tortured again today.

It's strange. I feel like I should have woken up with no idea what was going on again. But it's crystal clear from the second I open my eyes. Even though I'm opening them in total darkness.

Or maybe because of it. At home I always keep a small nightlight going. It's not that I'm afraid of the dark. I'm not. I just don't want to trip when I get up.

Getting up. That's another thing I won't be able to do today. Like being safe, and having breakfast in my kitchen, and starting a normal day and going to work...

I'm assuming it's morning. It feels like morning. I feel like I've gotten enough sleep.

Enough sleep? How could anyone get 'enough sleep' to face the horrors that lie ahead for me today?

I wonder how long I'm going to lie here before the Peacekeeper comes back. I wonder what he's going to do to me today. I wonder -

I stop myself. I can't be thinking this way. This time is invaluable. I need to plan. What am I going to do? Not what is he going to do, but what am _I_ going to do to resist?

It's going to be very difficult. I know that. Yesterday felt almost impossible, and yet it was only the beginning of what I know I'm going to face. The pain is only going to get worse from here on out. I have no illusions about that. He's already been gradually escalating his savagery against me, with his progression of attacks.

I try to imagine how much worse it could get, and fail. Even the pain I faced yesterday was so far beyond what I would ever have been capable of imagining before. I have no idea how to fathom what could be next.

I was scared before it started. Now that I've been through a little bit of the torture that stretches out before me, I'm terrified.

How am I ever going to get through this?

And he said it was only two hours. My heart shivers as I remember how sure I was, last night, that it had been so much longer. It occurs to me that he could have been lying about the time, but I dismiss the thought. There would have been no reason for him to. It was far more horribly, painfully effective to tell me the truth.

I'm getting sidetracked by my horror and my fear and my memories of pain. It's understandable, but I need to get my thoughts back on track. What am I going to do today? I have to find an effective way to resist. There's no way I'm going to let him break me. But sheer, raw defiance can only last me so long. I was already feeling far too much strain yesterday, in just that brief time. I can't let myself be brought that close to the edge over the long term.

So... if my emotions and my adrenaline are not going to carry me through, I need to look at this rationally. What can I use to prepare myself? What are my strengths?

I'm a stylist. The answer is so obvious, so central to who I am that it fills my mind before I've even finished asking myself the question. It's my life. My art means so very much to me. It's always been this way.

I always knew I wanted to be a stylist, even when I was a little kid before I knew the word for it. The opening ceremonies were the only part of the Hunger Games that I actually liked watching, until I got old enough to figure out that it was already part of the competition to see which of the kids would kill each other and which lucky one would survive. Even then, the intricate, themed outfits the tributes wore always fascinated me.

But when I was little, before I really connected the opening parade with the killing and injustice and misery and violence and death, I only knew that I wanted to be one of the people who made those incredible costumes.

And of course, that's only one part of being a stylist, even for those of us who work with the Games. The rest of the year, I'm working on designing and making ordinary clothes, party clothes, you name it. And those projects fascinate me too. There's something so incredible about the feeling of creating something beautiful that way.

_Especially,_ I think out of nowhere, _when I'm creating it for Katniss._

The thought jolts me back to the present. This is Katniss' second day in the arena. In a way, it's my second day in _my_ arena, too.

I focus on planning again. Okay. I need to use my strengths. My strengths are in being a stylist. At first thought, it doesn't seem to be something that has much to do with having the ability to resist torture.

Then I have an idea. What if I look at this whole experience as a chance to learn what it's like? I'm an artist. All knowledge is valuable to me.

I remember the fascination I felt at seeing the awful bruise on my arm yesterday. Even through the pain, I was struck by the sheer artistic vividness of seeing something that intense. And even the pain itself is something that I could, possibly, find a way to use as inspiration.

It's like what I told Katniss several days ago, when she was concerned that I might cry for her and put even more of a strain on her when she was so busy just trying to survive.

_I always channel my emotions into my work..._

What if I can do the same thing with my pain? What if I can let myself see this, not as something to force myself to endure, but as something to absorb and then draw on later for artistic inspiration?

It's an incredible idea. It's frightening but at the same time somehow irresistible.

I decide to go with it.

I'm an artist. I'm going to face this as an artist, my way, on my terms.

That way, I may actually have a chance to survive.

I feel so much calmer now. My heart is still racing with adrenaline, but it's a subtly different kind. Now I feel flooded with the adrenaline of preparing for a spectacular challenge, rather than that of simple, sheer terror.

It's like the last hours before a presentation of my work. The last minutes before Portia and I sent Peeta and Katniss into the chariot parades, wearing their streamers of fire or their volcanic, glowing layers of coal. It's like stitching fast to finish a creation, even though I'm hours ahead of schedule, because I never know when something might happen to throw off my timeline and I'll be left scrambling.

It's like sitting in the audience at the interviews two days ago, so tense inside but outwardly calm and quiet, counting down the seconds until Katniss would be revealed as my Mockingjay.

I'm glad I woke up on my own, instead of being woken by the cruel Peacekeeper coming to hurt me. I feel myself smiling. He really should have planned better. Now instead of being caught off guard and off balance, I'm prepared to resist him my way.

I have the concept of my design. Now it's time to see how my creation of it turns out.

Minutes later, the door opens. I hear the familiar snapping sound of the light switch, and remember just in time to close my eyes so I'm not completely blinded when the light comes on.

Even so, the brightness hits my closed eyes with a hot wash of red. I squeeze them more tightly shut, adjusting to the glare, then gradually open them again. The light is bright and dazzling now, but not intolerable.

By now, someone is walking toward me. I recognize the sound of his particular footfalls before he even comes into view. There's no mistaking that steady, measured confidence. The heavy step of each boot, as he places one foot before he even thinks about picking up the next.

Not that it takes a great deal of detective work to figure it out. There's only one person it's likely to be. And of course, when he stops beside me and looks down into my face, that's exactly who it is.

It's the Peacekeeper with the hard eyes.

He laughs. "You're up early," he says, seeing that my eyes are open and I'm alert and looking at him. "Did you sleep well?"

_Actually, yes, I did,_ I think. I can't figure out if it's a good idea to say it. I'm starting to realize that whatever I say, if I'm not careful, he could wind up using the information against me to hurt me later on. So I'm being very careful. If I'm not sure I should say something, I don't.

When I don't speak, he laughs again. "It doesn't matter. You're awake now, and it's time to get you ready for today." He turns his head, looking at the door. "Come in," he says.

Two men enter the room and join the Peacekeeper in standing over me. All three would tower above my height even if I was standing. With me strapped onto this table, I'm looking up at them from about the level of their waists.

There's something oddly familiar about the stance and attitude of these two newcomers. Their deference, their air of being his employees, of being here in a capacity of support... I've seen something very much like it before.

A lot of times.

I look up at the face of my torturer, who's standing there with such cruel confidence and such an air of being in control.

_Wow,_ I think with a disconcerting variation on amusement. _You have a prep team._

Again, as with my thoughts last night about the Peacekeeper's tools and my own, drawing such a comparison makes me sick. It's even worse this time. The idea of any similarity between these cruel-faced, overgrown bullies and my own compassionate, deeply loyal Flavius, Venia, and Octavia is enough to make my stomach twist into a hard knot inside of me.

It's made worse by his next words. They're ones I've used myself, countless times. To hear them so twisted in his mouth, in his hard, unfeeling voice, sets an icy ball of searingly cold pain straight into my gut.

"Get him ready," he says stonily, then turns on his heel and leaves.

The thugs - I refuse to call them a _prep team!_ - go about their business as he directed. They don't even seem to see me as a person. They just do their work, ignoring me except for the things they need to do. Ignoring my spirit. Interacting cursorily with my body, but ignoring _me._

They take care of my basic physical needs. I'm fed a sickeningly bland sort of gruel, then offered water through a long straw. They clean the blood and sweat from my skin. They briefly release the bonds on my feet, long enough to allow me to use a bedpan. I suppose they will do these things for me as long as I am here.

The question of just how long that could be is one that I've been trying very hard not to focus on.

I can't shake off the resemblance between their work and that of my prep team. It's horrible, but I can't deny the similarity. First, these men do basic tasks to prepare the person before the arrival of the expert. The stylist - or the torturer. Then the expert himself arrives to begin his work.

And right in time with my thoughts, _my_ expert walks in the door.

A realization strikes me as I see him. I've been trying to figure out whether he's one of the Peacekeepers who arrested me. He isn't. Now I realize why that wouldn't have made sense. No one sends professional torturers to arrest people.

They send professional torturers to torture people.

"Hello again, Cinna," he says almost conversationally as he steps into view. "Are you ready for today? It doesn't matter if you are or not, because we're going to start anyway. Unless you'd prefer a different option?"

"I would," I say. "But I don't have one. I don't know anything else I can tell you."

"Still with that line?" he asks, obviously unimpressed. "I told you, I've heard that one more often than I can count. All right. I wanted a challenge. I admit I would have been disappointed if you had caved first thing this morning."

His voice turns even crueler. "Then let's start. We have a long day ahead of us."

I can't help thinking he's chosen his words carefully, to hurt me. _A long day..._

Still, I feel prepared. I look him straight in the eye, quietly challenging his brutal power. "All right," I say, keeping my voice as quiet as my eyes. "If it has to happen, then yes. Let's start."

* * *

I soon find out that today, I'm going to be tortured by three people at once. The prep team -

_No! Not the 'prep team!'_ I think vehemently.

The torturer's two assistants do not leave the room. Instead, they choose vicious weapons of their own and join him in hurting me.

Pain slams into my awareness head-on as they begin their careful attacks. It's worse than I remembered. Apparently my mind wasn't calling up my memories from yesterday as vividly as I'd thought.

I have a feeling that, as I experience more and more hours and days of torture, that is going to change...

It's amazing how calm I'm feeling, though. I'm so fascinated by the visible results of their savage actions that I can almost ignore the brutality of what they're doing to me.

I watch calmly and carefully as they damage my flesh. There is a great deal of pain, of course. But I allow my attention to be absorbed by examining the way the injuries look. _Maybe,_ I think, _one day I will create a design that looks like this._

The shading and colors are wonderfully complex. I have seen human injuries before, but something always restrained me from weaving that knowledge into my creations. Somehow, because it is my own body being wounded this time, I am now free to use these observations without a sense of intruding on someone's dignity.

To the apparent consternation of my torturers, I feel my face taking on a faint smile. Surely this must seem insensitive of me, to disregard all their careful work by feeling something other than horror and fear. But I make no apologies. I am an artist, and this experience, like any other, must inevitably open new paths for my creativity to explore.

The interest and curiosity that I feel are absorbing enough, but I have more pressing matters to consider. Ignoring the violence of my captors now, and ignoring too the wealth of information it creates in my body, I focus on defining my immediate goals.

_My first priority is to aid Katniss and the rebellion, if I can. My second is to survive. My third is to escape._ I catch my breath at a particularly painful invasion. Frowning slightly, I acknowledge the flicker in my composure, accept it, and move forward with my thoughts. _Not just out the door, but to get cleanly away from this whole trap. It does me no good to reach the hallway only to be brought back here._

But how to do those things? I don't know a lot about what's happening to Katniss _or_ in the rebellion. That was very important. We had to make sure of it. Because anything I knew, my torturers might find out.

And if I don't know, how can I think of a way to help?

_Maybe I've already done everything I can. Maybe it's like when I'd already sent Katniss into the arena..._

Katniss _is_ already in the arena. And my other friends in the rebellion are already facing... whatever they're facing. So it's true, there's nothing I can directly do for them right now.

Except for one thing. I can keep their secrets, what little I know of them, no matter what the Peacekeeper and his men do to me.

And I'm doing that. I'm scared and it's hard, even with what I'm able to do for myself by focusing on the artistic side of this experience, but I'm still keeping those secrets. I'm not telling my torturers any names. Any plans. Anything at all. I'm still resisting and I'm a lot more confident now that I will be able to hold out.

_So. My first goal is in progress and on track to succeed. Now for my next one._

Survival. Now that is a trickier one. I'm completely unable to protect myself in any physical way.

That thought still brings back a wave of the horror I felt when I first realized it yesterday. It's incredibly terrible to be stopped, again and again, from the simple action of lifting my hand to push away something that's causing me pain. To feel my arm muscles tighten, acting on the signals for movement, then be stopped hard by the feeling of solid metal around my wrist.

Again and again. Every time.

It's unimaginably terrifying.

Especially when the Peacekeeper and his men are causing me this much pain.

They do stop once in a while, though. Now and then they step aside and quietly confer about how best to hurt me, further reinforcing their horrifying travesty of the stylist-and-prep-team dynamic for me.

I'm not going to let my horror at that concept overwhelm me. Instead I focus on moving toward my goals again.

_Survival._ How am I going to do that?

I don't know. I just don't know what I can do to protect my own life, not when they could take one of their weapons and simply kill me at any moment. I wouldn't be able to stop them. I couldn't free my hands to block a killing blow any more than I can to block all the wounds they're using to cause me all this agony.

A thought strikes me. Maybe I don't have to protect myself physically. There's a reason they're hurting me. It's because they want information. They think I have it. They're determined to get it. And they won't get it if I'm dead.

So if I keep silent and don't answer their questions, it might just help me accomplish my second goal as well as my first.

Maybe I can protect my friends in the rebellion... _and_ my own life. By doing the same thing.

My third goal is to escape. It's time to focus on that. But now I'm hitting a blank wall in my mind.

I can't even begin to come up with an idea. I am securely fastened down. There is no way that I'll be able to simply slip out of the restraints that hold me. I might be able to slide free of the band across my shoulders, but the metal cuffs are fitted too solidly around my wrists and ankles for me to be able to pull away.

Of course.

How else would they be?

So I'm trapped here with the pain I'm feeling, completely at the mercy of these hard-faced men who are torturing me.

And they have no mercy. That's why they were given this job.

No one who had any mercy or compassion at all in his heart could possibly stand to be a torturer.

* * *

The hours go by slowly. Even more slowly than they might have, I think, because I know that what felt like five hours yesterday was really only two. That knowledge is making this day of pain seem to crawl by for me even more.

The men are still hurting me. I'm still silent.

I'm still watching.

I'm still fascinated by the appearance of all the wounds they're causing me. The colors. The textures. The subtle, smooth, red flow of my blood from the many cuts they're inflicting. The way the purple edges of my deep, painful bruises blend out, fainter and fainter, until they fade into the paleness of the as-yet-uninjured areas of my skin.

I can't imagine why I would ever _really_ make anything that looked like this, though.

It doesn't matter. I can still use the colors, the emotions, the whole amazingly vivid experience, for something else. I never know how something's going to relate to one of my projects until I suddenly see it in my mind.

That's just how my creativity works.

My creativity... That thought brings me back to an incredible memory. Now I'm fighting hard not to smile because I'm not sure how my torturers would take it.

What's wrong with that? I let my face relax into a brilliant grin. I don't care what my torturers will think.

Let them wonder. They wouldn't get it anyway.

I'm remembering the moment when Katniss appeared on Caesar's stage as my Mockingjay. She was beautiful, of course. My heart lit with joy at the sight of her as it always does. But it was more than that.

It was the moment of my greatest act of defiance.

I remember sitting in the audience, silently shaking with pride and excitement and thinking again and again, _I really did it!_

And when Caesar Flickerman called on me to take a bow and claim my work and my public defiance in front of all of Panem, I remember fighting to keep my face from lighting up into a huge grin.

_I really did it! I've said this so loudly, no one can deny it. I've given the rebellion their Mockingjay and there's no way, not a chance, that the TV people can edit this scene out of the memories of everyone in Panem. I've done it!_

Of course I was scared. Of course I knew I was going to pay, with worse pain and fear than I could imagine, and probably with my life. Even so, what I felt more than anything at that moment was elation and wild pride. I felt like if I wanted to, I could stand up, raise my arms to the sky, and take flight like a mockingjay myself.

Now, I can't fly anywhere. I'm clamped to a hard table, lying flat on my back, and trapped in a tide of fierce pain that really is worse than anything I could have imagined. Still, I can't help wondering.

If I _could_ have imagined it, if I had known right then at the interviews just how agonizingly hard this was going to be for me, if I had known exactly how much they were going to hurt me... would I still have felt the same way? Would I have felt that pride, that elated sense of personal victory, that overwhelming excitement at having made that Mockingjay dress and made that choice?

_Yes,_ I think fiercely. _Even more so._

* * *

I'm still facing pain. This day still isn't over.

And now I'm thinking about Katniss again. I'm thinking of where my beautiful, fiery Mockingjay is now. Right now, at this minute. But it's so hard to guess.

I don't know what time it is. I don't know what Katniss's arena looks like. I don't know what she might be facing right now.

But I do know exactly what I'm facing in my own arena.

I keep coming back to that thought. I keep thinking of this as an arena, of myself as a tribute in some bizarre Hunger Games where there are no other tributes and the only enemy I'm facing is my own pain.

_ Strange arena,_ I think. _Strapped to a table, unable to move... But it's an arena anyway._

_ I know, because I'm fighting in it._

I decide to set myself a new challenge. Instead of just trying to keep my pain from showing, I'm going to see if I can keep from reacting physically at all.

It's strange. Sometimes it's harder to keep my face and my body under control just _before_ I feel the pain than while I'm actually feeling it.

Not that there are a lot of moments where I don't feel pain. Not anymore. At first my torturers would pause, they would give me a chance to think about it, to absorb what they'd already done. Now it's almost constant.

Still, I tell myself, that only means it's an almost constant source of inspiration.

I keep bringing myself back to that, and it still seems to be working.

Now and then, they do stop to ask me questions. Like now.

"Tell me about the rebellion," the hard-eyed Peacekeeper demands. He closes a brutal hand on my shoulder, putting cruel pressure on my wounded flesh around my bones. "Who else was involved in your Mockingjay plan?"

"No one!" I say angrily. How dare he keep asking me this? How dare he keep demanding the names of my friends? He has to know I won't tell him.

Only he doesn't. He doesn't know. He really thinks he's going to break me. He thinks there's some kind of pain he could inflict on me that would hurt worse than seeing him hurt Haymitch, or Portia, or Plutarch, or the people of Thirteen.

Or Katniss.

An icy fist clenches around my heart. There's no way I'll let him hurt Katniss.

Not any more than she's already being hurt.

The thought of the pain and danger she's facing in the arena: It reminds me of why I made the Mockingjay dress in the first place. It was the same reason that I decided to work with the Hunger Games at all. If something that awful was going to be happening to people, I needed to be as close to it as I could. That way if I ever saw a chance to do something about it, I would already be right there. In position to act.

And that's what I did. By designing the Mockingjay.

I did it because of the pain the tributes feel in the arena.

"Do you want to know why I did it?" I ask him carefully.

He looks at me consideringly. Slowly, he nods. "That's a start," he tells me. "Keep talking, Cinna. Why did you do it?"

"I couldn't sleep the night your mutts tortured that boy in last year's Games," I tell him, keeping my voice low and measured even through my pain at the memory.

I know that tortured boy's name. Cato.

But it would probably mean nothing to his torturers. Nothing to these cruel-faced men who work for President Snow as the Gamemakers do, making their living by trapping other human beings in fear and helpless agony. "Did _you_ sleep that night?"

It's one of the Peacekeeper's assistants who answers. "Sleep through something that exciting?" he says with a scornful laugh. "Not likely! I was taking bets with my pals on how many times he'd beg for death before he got it!"

My heart fills with rage, remembering Cato's anguished screams and pleading that went on for hours. I glare at the man, my eyes locked on his.

"Do you think his family was excited?" I finally manage to say through the clenched muscles of my throat.

"Who cares?" the thug answers with a careless shrug. "I was."

His casual dismissiveness of that family's agony overwhelms me with a wave of new horror.

_Insensitive Capitol attitude!_ I think in fury.

I catch myself. I'm from the Capitol too. I shouldn't generalize. But there's no denying that a lot of the people here just fundamentally don't get it. About life. About compassion. About anything.

Even my prep team, as kindhearted as they are, can't really see how horrifying the Games are. To them, it's just one more kind of excitement. They can't connect it with the idea that all these kids are actually dying, year after year. Suffering and scared and dying, their families' hearts broken and lives torn apart.

And for the victors, like Peeta and Katniss and Finnick, a life of subtle and not-so-subtle horrors that I think I can't even begin to really imagine.

Even now, I probably still can't. There are other kinds of pain besides torture.

* * *

About a half-hour later - I think it's a half hour, anyway - the Peacekeeper quietly turns to his men. "I think you've worked long enough for right now," he tells them almost gently. "Why don't you both take a break? Come back in an hour or so. I'll be here."

It's so much like the way I talk to my own beloved prep team that a chill goes through me. Only it isn't the same. Because his kindness is false. He doesn't wish any harm on his men, surely, but he also doesn't truly feel any affection for them. He isn't capable of such an emotion.

Or so I thought.

The men nod, put away their weapons, and quietly leave. The door closes behind them.

Now I'm lying here in a silent room with the brutal Peacekeeper standing over me. He's holding some awful weapon in his hand, but making no move to use it.

Instead, he gives me a very grave, serious look and speaks quietly. "It really was a shame about Cato."

I look at him in surprise. This is not the kind of thing I usually hear from him. "I'm surprised you remember his name," I say.

My torturer walks to the cabinet and sets down the weapon he was holding, then walks back and and stands there looking down at me. His face looks more normal than I've ever seen it. For the first time, he seems like a real person who might have a life outside of his job.

"I knew Cato and his family when he was a baby," he says. "I grew up in Two."

_ A life, and maybe even a family,_ I think, as the human being who's standing beside me starts to come into focus as a human being.

"What brought you here to the Capitol?" I ask him. It feels important, somehow, to make a connection with this man - now that I'm seeing him _as_ a man and not just a torturer. It may not do any good to stop him from hurting me, but it seems important anyway. I just want to create that human contact. It's so hard to be thinking of a person as _not_ a person. It feels wrong.

I want to know who this person is. And he's telling me.

"I was a Career," he says, "but I was never in the Games. I wasn't selected to volunteer. So after I got too old for the Games, I signed up for Peacekeeper training. I was eventually assigned here to the Capitol." He pauses and his eyes get even harder at some memory. "They found out I had a certain... aptitude... for this particular kind of work."

The cold words horrify me. This is far too close to what I imagined about Clove yesterday. Clove, the girl whose heart was twisted since childhood by the violence of her world. Someone's precious, beautiful child, who became a cruel killer and might have one day found herself in this awful job.

Clove, who might have believed she was happy in a life of hurting people every day.

Clove was also from District Two. Like this man.

"I'm sorry," I tell him. It's the only thing I can think of to say, and it feels massively inadequate. How do you express sympathy to a person whose life has been ruined by cruelty and torture? By _inflicting_ cruelty and torture? It's done so much more damage to him, I know instinctively, than any of his attacks could ever do to me.

His eyes get harder than stone, and I know I've crossed an inexcusable line.

He shakes his head and scowls angrily at me. This is not something he's willing to discuss or even think about, it seems. Instead he brings the subject back to where it started.

"Cato knew what he was getting into. Rough things happen in the Games," he says brusquely, and the conversation is over. He walks out of sight again to his horrifying tool cabinet, and I hear him picking up a weapon. I wonder if it's the same one he set down a few minutes ago.

Our brief moment of camaraderie hasn't changed anything. He's still a professional torturer, and I'm still his prisoner.


	3. Chapter 3

Author's Note: Well, I made my two-week deadline! With a day to spare, no less. Chapter Four is also finished now. I've been working on both as one project. Actually, they were both going to be the same chapter... but as I kind of suspected all along, it's turned into two because of the length. I think it works well this way. Review and tell me what _you_ think!

I'll be posting Chapter Four early next week. Tuesday at the latest. By then, I hope I'll have my drawings and the beginning of my audiobook version of this story posted too. Sorry about all the delay with those! I guarantee they'll be worth the wait, though.

Now I have to say one more thing: thank you for reading this! It's very important to me to tell Cinna's story and not leave it unsung. And I can only tell it effectively if I'm telling it _to_ someone. So, dear reader: I'm dedicating this chapter to YOU! That's right, you, for reading this.

Thanks for helping me make this story come to life!

* * *

It's been hours. I'm still here, and I'm still being tortured.

It's impossible that this could still be the same day. I feel like I've been in pain for a week with no rest. No breaks. I'm so exhausted and I just can't see how I can fight any more.

But I have to keep fighting, because my battle is still going on.

I'm still in my arena. And this is still only the second day.

_So what will it feel like on the twentieth?_

There's no way I can let myself think about that. I just have to hold on. Surely it can only be a few more hours. Even though I keep being wrong about the time. I still have to be getting close to the end of today.

Because this isn't the first time I've thought it could only be a few more hours. I've thought it several times already. And each of those times was what felt like at least half a day apart.

_ There are only so many times that could happen before one of them would have to be true._

It's amazing how hard it is to hold on to a logical thought like that in the face of so much pain.

And it's amazing how hard it is to hold on to my artistic focus on the things I can learn from all of this.

Right now, I feel like all I'm learning is that pain hurts. A lot.

I close my eyes and just give up on watching for now. Maybe even without the visual part, I can still get something from what I'm feeling. Something for my art.

Something to keep my mind off the idea that I'm being tortured.

It's so strange. I'm distracting myself from the pain of being tortured... by thinking about the pain of being tortured.

Actually, the pain I'm feeling isn't just from the torture itself. A lot of things are hurting me. Things I would never have thought about until I was facing them.

My throat hurts from what I can't exactly call dehydration, since they did give me enough water this morning, but certainly from thirst. From not having had anything to drink for hours, while all this same time I've had to keep clenching my throat and my jaws so tightly closed to keep from screaming when the pain got too bad. Which it's been doing a lot.

The hard metal edges of the cuffs are cutting into the sides of my wrists and ankles, too. I haven't been able to see them too well, even when I've tried to look, but I can feel it. And I can imagine what it probably looks like.

I imagine that the skin along those edges must be turning a raw, bright pink by now. There must be low, puffy abrasions at the points of contact. On my right wrist especially, I can feel the deep stinging. I've tried again and again, by reflex, to reach up with that hand, trying to prevent or stop some horribly painful attack.

It's taking my body even longer than my mind to accept the fact that I can't do that. The fact that I can't do something that simple.

The thought still makes me shudder. It's completely horrifying.

_ Everyone should be able to reach up or move aside to protect themselves from pain._

I won't focus on that thought. Relentlessly, I make my mind continue the search for something to think about that I can use later on for my art.

That I can use right now to help me survive.

All right. Back to focusing on the sensations of my body, _other_ than this torture.

My back is cramped and knotted from lying in this same position for so long. Especially with all the pain I've been feeling, and the tension, and my body's reflexive efforts to break free.

Reflexive, and useless. Because there's no way I'm going anywhere.

Not while I'm clamped down with such unbreakable bonds and being tortured.

_Being tortured..._ It's a horrible thought. It's a horrible thing to be happening.

Horrible, and almost incomprehensible.

It's still hard for me to accept that I'm actually being tortured. It's so far outside of anywhere my life has ever gone before now. So far outside of anything I ever expected to face. Until recently.

Being tortured is not the kind of thing you think of as ever really happening to you.

The feeling persists in spite of the brutal reality of what I'm facing. It feels strange to even think the words.

_I'm being tortured._

It feels so strange and almost unreal, but it's true. I am a prisoner of President Snow's government and I am being tortured for information about the rebellion.

There's nothing unreal, though, about the pain I'm feeling. They're doing something to both my upper arms right now. Some kind of crushing damage, I think. It's ferociously painful and it's also terrifying me, because if my arms are damaged I won't be able to work properly. And I need my work. I need it to live.

I can't be Cinna if I can't create.

_Stop it,_ I tell myself. _They're being careful. They have to be. They can't damage me too badly or they'll lose me and lose their chance to question me._

But how long will they be interested in that? What if they decide I have nothing to say that they want to hear? Will they kill me then?

Suddenly I'm filled with a whole new kind of terror.

I've been facing all this by believing I'll get through it. Believing I'll escape. Thinking about the time when I'll be free to create my designs again.

_What if that never happens? What if I don't escape at all?_

What if my hands are never free again between now and the time I die? What if they kill me before I ever thread another needle?

I might never create another fashion ever again.

The thought fills me with such an awful aching pain inside that I almost can't even force my body to breathe.

_I can't die without ever creating again!_

It's throwing me into a panic. Just this sudden jolt of white-hot terror flying out from my heart to fill my whole soul. I'm terrified now -

- and when I'm this terrified, it's suddenly impossible to stand the physical pain.

There's just this wave of pain that's crashing into all my senses. It was already there, but now I'm focusing on it and it's so terrible that I just can't stand it. I don't think I can stand it for another second.

I'm gasping now and fighting desperately to hold on to my control. And how long can this last? Not long.

_All right. I have to calm myself. I'm an artist. That's what I decided -_

The savage pain in my arms breaks me out of my thoughts. Still that terrifying pain in my arms, still that fear of never being able to create again -

_No. I'm going to focus. I am going to fight this and I'm going to win._

_I'm going to survive. I'm going to create again._

_I'm still Cinna the stylist. I'm going to make it._

Slowly, I take a deep breath. I feel my body relaxing. I feel my thoughts calming down.

_It's all right. Steady, Cinna. I've got this._

I open my eyes and look. The wounds in my arms are vivid. Brutal. Bruises spreading from my shoulders to my elbows now. Contrast that with the gleaming silver of the weapons that are still damaging me. The hard faces of my torturers. The remorseless expressions in their eyes.

Sweep out even farther, to the hard, white, almost savagely bright walls of this terrible room. The venue. The backdrop.

It's all so visually intense. It's totally fascinating.

But I'm still feeling so much pain. I'm still barely able to hang on.

So I'm facing this question. What am I going to do, if what I'm doing now isn't enough?

It's very simple. And it's very important.

I'm going to have to take this a step further. Deliberately, I start designing fashions in my head.

_All right. The first step is to have someone to create for._

Maybe I'll make something for _him,_ I think suddenly, looking at the Peacekeeper. Something awful and cruel, so he can look the way he really is -

_No, I don't want to do that!_

I don't want to think that way. I'll just make something that works for him visually. I don't _want_ to create something awful and cruel. I'm not like that. I'm not the same kind of stylist he is.

_Stop it!_ I think almost frantically. _He's not a stylist! Let's see, I need gray, to go with his eyes. Gray..._

Before long, I have a whole outfit for him in the works. A severe gray suit. A stiff white shirt. I can't help making it a little grim, no matter what I do or don't want to feel or how much of it I do or don't want to put into my creation.

Still, I find myself looking for something to soften it. Something to complete the look. Something to balance it somehow. The question occupies me enough that I'm almost able to ignore the pain he's causing me.

Almost. Only almost, and the thought of that pain makes me focus on it more.

It's changed. Of course. It keeps doing that.

_They_ keep doing that. Changing my pain. Looking for something else that might be harder for me to stand. So they can break me.

They're not going to break me. It's never going to happen. But they don't know that. And unquestionably, in their _attempts_ to break me, they're causing me a horrible amount of pain.

He and his assistants have put away their crushing weapons. The assistants are over by the tool chest, no doubt picking out something else horrible to hurt me with. I can't think about that. _Only this minute..._

The Peacekeeper is the only one hurting me right now. But that's bad enough. He's gotten out his old jagged knife, the one he first used on me when he started torturing me yesterday. The one with the curved blade and all the vicious little points.

Right now, he's inflicting another set of little cuts on me. This time, on the front of my upper right arm, a few inches above the crook of my elbow. Right where the other weapons have already bruised me.

It hurts. It hurts a lot, and it's really scaring me. A lot. Because that's my right arm, and I use that a lot when I make my designs.

_No. Don't think about it._

I bring my mind back to the design I'm making _now._ The one I'm making in my head, for the Peacekeeper.

_ I need something to soften the gray suit._

_ Something..._

I'm drawing a blank, but I keep thinking. Carefully, I visualize the whole suit again. I visualize him standng there wearing it. Just standing there. Not hurting me...

_Stop._

I just let my mind loose. I let it float and imagine what I might be missing in this design. It's a more dreamlike feeling than I usually have when I create, but it works for me right now.

Wordlessly, I let myself wonder what I need. I don't ask. I don't demand an answer from my thoughts. I just imagine.

I have it.

_The sky._

The buttons on his suit are going to be a soft, warm blue the color of the sky.

Because he shouldn't be in here all the time. He should be outside.

Everyone should be outside sometimes.

Neither of us should be in here all the time. We should be outside. And we should be free. Me from this pain, and him from the pain of causing it.

And we should be friends.

* * *

It's hours later. What feels like about six hours. Or maybe, once again, it's only two.

I'm very close to the edge of breaking now. It doesn't matter how many designs I create in my mind, for some time I've been hurting so badly I can hardly think.

Still, I'm holding on. And it seems they're getting very tired of watching me do that.

One of the torturer's assistants, especially, seems to be getting very frustrated. He's been watching my face for some time, watching me watch the wounds they're causing me. Apparently, he's starting to realize that this is somehow helping me.

He's looking more and more furious about that by the minute.

"Cover his damn eyes!" he finally bursts out.

The Peacekeeper's reply is cold and measured.

"No. Break him."

_Break me?_ I think. Something in his words is catching my attention through my pain. Something in the way he's saying it.

_ Interesting. He doesn't mean what I would usually expect him to mean by that. He isn't talking about getting me to answer their questions._

This time, he's talking about my artistic interest. It's getting in the way of their torture. They may not exactly understand what I'm doing, but they know I'm doing _something._ And they don't like it. They want me to stop it.

They also have a plan for how to handle it. How, they think, to _make_ me stop.

Their plan is simple, of course. Simple and predictable.

More pain. A _lot_ more pain.

And, of course, they put their plan into effect immediately.

They're really stepping things up now. The pain is getting more and more difficult to bear. I'm still trying to hold on to my artistic focus but it's getting very hard.

They're doing their best to make it even harder. After all this, I'm finally feeling like I'm about to fall apart.

I won't _let_ myself fall apart. So I make a deliberate choice.

_I'm going to be something that they can't break._

I imagine myself as a length of fabric with a high tensile strength.

It's a spectacular image. I'm this dark sort of black-green fabric, shimmering and rustling as it's pulled tighter and tighter between these two big machines. I'm sort of shiny. Some kind of satin. Something you wouldn't expect to be this strong, but it is. There's no way they can break it.

There's no way they can break _me._

The fabric is shaking hard now. These big, steel machines are clamped to it all the way across both ends. They're pulling it harder and harder, but it's still not breaking. It doesn't matter what they do, it's not breaking!

The fabric is having to fight very hard now. _I'm_ fighting very hard now. It's shaking and rippling in great, deep waves all along its length. It's almost bouncing up and down with the strain. There's an amazing amount of movement involved, for something that's pulled so tight you'd think it would be immobilized.

Impossibly, the grasping arms of the steel machines themselves are starting to be pulled in now. They're bowing inward, toward the fabric, as it refuses to break under the tension.

Solid steel. Pitted against a thin sheet of glossy satin. And the satin's winning.

This is what is meant by _tensile strength._

It doesn't matter what those machines do. It doesn't matter how much force they use.

This fabric is stronger than the things that are pulling at it. Just like me.

And then, a sudden sound cuts across my thoughts. The high, familiar scream of agony blends and merges with my visualization, bringing me the image of a knife slicing across the center of the fabric.

There is more than one way for that piece of fabric to break.

The cut slashes across its resistance, cutting right through the middle of all its strength. All _my_ strength. I feel my fabric springing up and out to the sides, falling over the suddenly relaxed arms of the awful pulling machines. I feel completely cut in half. Completely broken.

They've cut me right in half. And now I'm left without any way to resist, because of the awful agony of what I'm hearing.

And right along with that, my imagery shatters. Leaving me with only the sound.

It's an utterly familiar voice. But I've never heard her scream like this before.

She cries out again, desperately.

"Cinna, help us!" It's Octavia! She's in agony! Such agony that she could never have imagined -

And right on the heels of that sound -

"No!" A frantic denial of pain - in Venia's voice!

And then a pure shriek of wordless agony. _Flavius!_

I panic, trying to break free and go to them. Someone is torturing my prep team!

Of course, I can't move. That only adds to my terror, in a different way than it's been doing all this time.

My prep team is being tortured and I can't get to them!

"Stop!" I yell. It is the first time I've yelled in twelve years. "Stop hurting them! They didn't do anything!"

I'm panicking. I'm absolutely frantic! I'm thrashing and fighting as hard as I can, but it's resulting in barely any movement. What am I going to do? _My prep team!_

"You can't hurt them!" I yell again, even more desperately. "They didn't know! I didn't tell them about the dress! Leave them alone!"

There's such agony in my voice, and it's all twisted and tangled between the agony of my body and the worse agony of my heart. This is not exactly what I had in mind for not breaking, but right now I almost don't care. I just have to help my prep team! Only how can I? I can't even move! I'm completely panicking.

Then, somehow, a completely calm thought surfaces in the middle of my panic.

_Wait a minute. Those can't be their voices. My prep team is safe in District 13._

This doesn't make any sense. Why are they here? What is someone doing to them? They're safe in District 13.

I know they're safe in Thirteen. Portia told me the night of the interviews that they had gotten out.

Then how are they being tortured like this?

"Cinna!" Another cry of sheer desperation, this one from Venia again.

And I'm still in so much pain myself that it's hard to even focus. Only nothing could keep me from focusing on the voices of my prep team, not when they sound like this.

Not when they're being _tortured_ like this.

Again, my mind insists on a calm, simple, logical truth.

_ They're safe in District Thirteen._

_They're not being tortured. They can't be. District Thirteen is protecting them._

Suddenly, I'm aware of my breathing. I'm gasping, shuddering with each breath, my body fighting to get air in and out of my lungs. I'm fighting to keep calm. I'm fighting to think clearly.

_My prep team..._

_No one is hurting my prep team._

_ No one._

_ I know that. So I don't have to be scared._

And then a searing slash of pain jolts me out of my fragile calm, as one of my torturers inflicts some kind of long, terrible cut along the outside of my left leg, from my knee to my ankle.


	4. Chapter 4

Author's Note: Well, I've finally posted my drawings! You can find them on my DeviantArt account. My name there is Lysana2124. No audiobook yet, though. Sorry! :( But I'll try to get that posted soon too!

* * *

My leg jerks, fighting to be free of the pain of the long, awful cut they've just made in my skin. I barely manage to form one dizzy thought: _I don't think they care how much I bleed anymore!_

But even as I'm thinking it, I feel someone applying some kind of long, adhesive bandage along the length of the wound. There's a harsh stinging from some kind of medicine in the padding.

Apparently they _do_ care if I bleed. Or at least, they want to stop it before I bleed to death.

They're eager to keep me alive so they can keep questioning me. And now that they've hurt me so badly with this horrible attack on my heart, they think they might be very close to breaking me.

Because a few minutes ago, they played a fake recording of my prep team's voices crying out in pain. Even though I quickly figured out that it wasn't true, the agony of hearing that has almost torn me apart.

And I still keep hearing those tortured voices in my head. They weren't real. But they _sounded_ so real. And now I can't stop imagining the pain that my gentle team would have to feel to make them really sound like that.

_Octavia... Venia... Flavius!_ I'm just horrified by this whole hideous thought, even though I know it isn't real.

Even though I know that the only person who's really being tortured here is me.

I'm still managing to keep silent, but it's so hard. My torturers are hurting me more and more every second. And now that I'm not terrified for my prep team anymore, I'm focusing more and more on the terrible pain in my body.

And I don't feel like I have any way to resist anymore. Of course, that's why they did it. So I'd be completely thrown off balance and horrified. So it would be easier for them to break me. So they wouldn't keep having to see me calmly watching my wounds.

Well, I'm not watching my wounds anymore. I'm watching the ceiling and trying not to scream. And even though I know now that it can't have been true, my horror at what I've just heard is still washing over me and making it even harder for me to resist my physical pain.

_How could they do that? How could they even _pretend_ to hurt my prep team? It's abominable! How could they stand to even _listen_ to the sounds? How in the _world_ could they ever stand to create them?_

Because I know that's what they must have done. It's some technological thing. They took recordings of my team's voices and modified them somehow, making them sound like they were screaming in agony when they really weren't.

Right in the middle of my horrified thoughts, the Peacekeeper's hard voice breaks into my pain.

"Now I have something to show you, Cinna."

My eyes dart towards him. I'm feeling a horrible chill at his words. _What is he thinking? Show me what?_

His eyes meet mine. He nods in satisfaction, seeing that he's got my attention. He sets down the weapon he's been using to injure me. He sets it right down on the table next to my upper arm, knowing I can't reach it or throw it aside or do _anything_ about it. Knowing it will be right there when he wants to hurt me again.

Then he turns and walks to the corner of the room, in front of me and to my right. He faces the wall and reaches out to touch it, flipping open a small panel and manipulating some kind of a control I can't quite see in the space behind it.

My eyes are drawn by movement above his head. In the top corner of the room, a thin, rectangular section of the ceiling slides away and disappears behind the wall. The line of that sliding section forms the third side of a triangle with the corner.

From the long, narrow hole in the ceiling, a flat-screen television drops silently into view. The set is facing me at an angle. I can see it clearly. It's about twenty inches wide, with a black frame. The screen is black too, and silent. Turned off.

The whole experience is so unnerving that I can't help shivering. _Why are they bringing this television into play?_ I wonder. Even my thoughts feel hushed. It's like I'm whispering inside my mind. _What are they going to do now?_

I soon find out.

The Peacekeeper reaches up and presses a button, turning on the TV. He switches it to Channel THG, The Hunger Games. I recognize the logo in the corner of the screen.

This channel is popular year-round. When the Games are in session, of course it shows that. The rest of the year, it shows the Victory Tour, reruns of old Games, and sickeningly lighthearted features on people's vacation visits to the earlier years' arenas.

Right now, it's showing Katniss.

My heart catches at the sight of her, beautiful and brave in the deadly arena. She's standing in a dense jungle, her bow at the ready, seemingly guarding Finnick Odair as he does something with a knife to the side of a tree.

_She's alive!_ I feel a quick slash of relief, but it doesn't last. Because the next thing I know, I'm hearing another voice screaming in agony.

_Prim!_

_What is someone doing to Prim?!_

And it's coming from the TV!

Katniss is hearing this. And she absolutely panics.

She runs off frantically into the jungle, screaming Prim's name. Desperately following after the sound. It's so much like the way I reacted a moment ago -

And it only gets worse. I watch in horror, completely trapped and still almost overwhelmed by my own physical pain, as Katniss desperately tries to reach her sister. As she runs farther and farther into the jungle, ignoring everything, terrified and in agony for Prim.

And then it turns out that it wasn't Prim after all. It was a jabberjay.

A jabberjay. Reproducing Prim's anguished, tortured voice. Katniss shoots it. Finnick arrives. Obviously they're allies, because he's come racing after Katniss to protect her. I feel a rush of gratitude towards him, for doing that when I can't. For protecting Katniss.

But then another terrible scream sounds, echoing through the jungle. And this one's attacking Finnick.

"Annie!" he yells. He runs off after the sound, in spite of Katniss' shouted attempts to tell him it's only a bird. Finally she catches up to him and shoots that one too. She tries to reassure him, but Finnick shakes his head in despair and tells her that they must have gotten the sounds from _somewhere._

Katniss stares at him for a second. Then she crumples to the ground in despair of her own.

And now Gale's voice is screaming...

_How many people have the Gamemakers hurt, just to torture Katniss and Finnick?_

Finnick pulls Katniss up and they try to flee, but they're stopped by an invisible barrier just before they can reach Peeta and what must be the rest of their allies.

They're slammed backward by the impact. Finnick is bleeding from the nose. Katniss seems to be only stunned. But their physical injuries are almost meaningless by comparison to what they're facing now.

Because now, they're trapped with the jabberjays...

Dozens of those birds are starting to arrive.

I'm completely horrified by what I'm seeing. What I'm hearing. The Gamemakers weren't satisfied with just Prim's and Annie's and Gale's agony. They must have targeted everyone in Panem that Finnick or Katniss cares about.

Finnick is lying on the ground, rolled up around himself and with his arms wrapped around his head, his hands over his ears. I can't fault him for it. He's clearly in agony. He has every right to try to somehow protect his mind from these sounds.

But Katniss...

Katniss is the Girl on Fire. She's not trying to just shield herself.

She's fighting back.

Katniss is fighting so bravely. I'm so proud of her! She's standing straight and tall, wielding her bow like the deadly hunter she is. Her face is filled with anger, right alongside her horror and pain. She's shooting arrows into one jabberjay after another, refusing to be broken by the pain those voices are causing her. Refusing to be taken down, no matter what.

_But what happens when she runs out of arrows?_

Of course, she does. She reaches for another one, finds nothing, and throws her bow to the ground with a cry of despair. Then she sinks down beside Finnick and curls herself up in a little ball on the ground, pressing her hands over her ears.

There's no way she's managing to keep out those sounds. That's clear to see from the agony in her whole shuddering body.

I almost can't think through the agony I'm feeling myself. Not the agony in my body. I don't care about that anymore. It's nothing to the agony of watching Katniss lying there trapped and terrified, unable to protect herself from hearing all those screams and cries. All the desperate, hopeless pleading for her help.

The voices of the people she loves...

My thoughts falter to a halt. My voice is not there. _Why?_

They know she cares about me. If they didn't, they would never have staged the attack in the Launch Room the way they did. They have to know the sound of my voice crying out in pain would hurt her...

Then I realize. The answer is so obvious.

I'm not crying out in pain.

_Of course my voice is not there. Of course they haven't sent it to attack her._

They can't. I'm not screaming.

Wait a second. My prep team wasn't screaming either. No one was really hurting them at all. The sounds were fake.

And for that matter, would it really make sense for the Gamemakers to torture all these people? And then televise the voices as part of the Games? Would Panem really go for that? Would even the people of the Capitol find it entertaining?

Of course not. It's too sick. It's far too unimaginably sick, even for the Hunger Games.

No one would go for it. No one at all.

That means -

_They're not really hurting Prim either! Or Gale, or any of them!_

_ And Katniss doesn't know! She thinks it's real!_

She's feeling the same desperate terror for her sister, and for all those other people, that I felt for my prep team. And she doesn't know!

I'm suddenly even more desperate myself. I'm overwhelmingly relieved for Prim and all the others, of course, now that I know it's all fake. But Katniss _doesn't_ know! She's trapped in the Gamemakers' awful deception and she doesn't know!

_They can't do this to my Katniss!_

But they're doing it. And I can't stop them.

I'm completely frantic.

"Katniss! It's not real!" I shout, fighting to keep the pain out of my voice. I feel my body going rigid, straining to tear free of my bonds as if somehow I could go to her and reassure her. "_Katniss!_ Don't listen! Don't believe it!" I shut my eyes, but wrench them open an instant later because if she's going through this, I can't look away.

I feel a sudden impact as my torturer's fist slams hard into the left side of my face. Apparently, the Peacekeeper has walked back to stand beside me while all my attention was focused on the TV screen.

"I wouldn't have pegged you for stupid, Cinna," he says in a hard, flat voice. "You're in a soundproofed room and she's in a closed arena miles from here."

Somehow the harsh blow brings my own pain back into focus. Breathing hard through my nose, I clamp my mouth closed and fight for silence as waves of agony run up and down my body.

I know what he's saying is true. There's no way Katniss could hear me. I just feel an overwhelming need to protect her. The fact that I can't is tearing a hole in my heart.

All I can do is watch her. And then, to my horror, I lose my chance to do even that.

The screen goes dark around the edges. I hear a brief snatch of the Hunger Games anthem. It's the same handful of notes that always plays at the beginning and end of a commercial break.

"I think that's enough," my torturer says coldly. Once again, he walks over to stand beneath the set.

I'm suddenly feeling colder than ever.

_He's going to turn it off again. I'm not going to know what happens to Katniss._

I strain forward, pulling at my bonds and ignoring the pain that's still blasting at my body, trying to see every possible instant of what may be my last sight of Katniss on this earth. She's still huddled on the ground in the jungle, curled up next to the equally devastated Finnick and trying along with him to block out the jabberjays' screams, when the scene changes to a row of Capitol storefronts.

An incongruously contented voice from off-screen announces, "Wasn't that exciting? Stay tuned for more in just a few minutes. Now, if you would be so kind as to listen to a few words from our merchants..."

My torturer reaches up and snaps a switch on the side of the television, turning off the broadcast. Then he walks back to my table. He picks his weapon back up and once more adds his efforts at hurting me to those of his assistants.

I hardly notice. I'm still staring at the black screen, willing it to come back to life so I can see into the arena again. I'm willing Katniss to somehow be all right even though I know this attack they've launched on her is probably the most devastating thing they could have done.

If you want to hurt Katniss, you do it by hurting someone she cares about.

And they know. They've known since the minute she volunteered for Prim. Katniss would rather be hurt or die herself than have it happen to someone she loves.

The Peacekeeper is looking at me now. I feel his eyes on my face. He's staring so hard that even through my horror, I can feel it. I turn my head to look at him.

His cold gray eyes are staring straight into mine. "You understand?" he asks me in a measured voice.

"Yes," I say. I'm so sick and horrified, and fighting so much pain, that I can't imagine how I'm managing to keep my voice steady. Maybe it's my rage that's letting me do it. "It's the same as when you made me believe you were torturing my prep team."

"Exactly," he tells me. "And of course you've guessed that the real target here is Katniss. The other tributes are just... part of the show. She's the one who's a threat to President Snow's government. So the Gamemakers have been looking for ways to take her apart. And this was one of their best ideas. Making her think that her family and her loved ones are being tortured. It's got her really rattled."

He shakes his head. "Unfortunately, she isn't likely to believe for long that it's true. Which is where you come in, Cinna."

A spike of fear drives into my heart.

_Me? What does he mean?_

He must be seeing that fear in my eyes, because he slowly smiles. Then, in a horrifyingly satisfied voice, he keeps talking.

"You see, we do want her to hear your voice. Just not your reassurances. Not your voice telling her that things are okay. We want her to hear you screaming."

"Then why not... make my voice scream... like you did with the others?" I ask him. I'm barely managing to speak now through the extreme pain his assistants are still causing me.

The Peacekeeper's smile grows wider. More satisfied. Vastly more cruel.

"We might have done that," he concedes. "It would certainly have been effective. But the Gamemakers have come up with an even better idea."

He gestures at a spot midway along the wall in front of me, about ten inches below the ceiling. Now that I'm focusing on that one spot, I can see it plainly. There's a tiny, blinking red light there. A pinpoint hole in the wall.

A camera.

I've suspected since I got here that my torturers were somehow observing me, even when they weren't in the room. But they're doing more than that.

They're recording me on video.

I don't have time to think about the horror of that. All I manage is to feel sickened and appalled for the briefest of instants. Then to realize that there's no reason I should have even been surprised.

Not in Panem. I know how people do things here.

_I did think of this as an arena. And the Hunger Games are always recorded on camera._

And my torturer is still talking. All my attention snaps right back onto the sound of his words.

"We'd like to show Katniss Everdeen that her friends are not as safe as she'd hope to think," the Peacekeeper says. "So here's the plan. We get you past this ridiculous silence of yours. We record your _real_ screams and cries. The Gamemakers train a jabberjay to mimic your voice. They send it to Katniss. They wait just long enough for her to conclude it's a fake like the others. And _then,_" he says, "they show her the videos. And suddenly she finds out that when she hears those voices, they might not be fake after all."

For a second, I almost manage not to accept what he's saying. It's so horrible. But then, the truth of it springs into my mind like a clawed beast and I can't escape from it anywhere.

They're planning to use the videos of _my_ torture... to make Katniss believe that the torture of her friends and family is real.

_ They want to use me to hurt Katniss! She's already being hurt so much, and now they want to use _me_ to hurt her even more!_

And all they have to do is force me to cry out. That's all they need. Then they'll be able to make Katniss believe that everyone she loves is being tortured after all.

The thought strikes me with such terror, I almost can't breathe.

I thought I was scared before. But there's no way it was anything to what I'm feeling now.

_I can't let them do this! I can't let them hurt Katniss with my voice!_

But it's going to be a struggle because they've sprung this on me now, right when I was already so close to losing my control.

Suddenly I'm not just fighting for the rebellion, and Katniss as part of it, anymore. I'm fighting for Katniss personally.

And I'm terrified of what will happen if I fail.

_I won't fail!_

There's no way I'll let myself be used to hurt Katniss.

My stomach twists into a knot again as I realize that's already been done. Once again I remember Katniss' eyes as she watched me being captured.

But there's a difference. They used me to hurt her, but I did not _let_ them do it. This is a situation where _I_ have a choice. And I won't let them send my voice to cause her pain.

My resolve is savagely tested as the hours crawl by. Hours of agony. Hours of endless, ruthless interrogation. I have no idea how many. It was daylight in the arena, but that doesn't tell me anything about what time it really is here. The Gamemakers can control day and night as easily as they control everything else the tributes face.

Once, I saw a Games where they stretched every day to thirty hours instead of twenty-four. The tributes were almost going mad, wondering why their days seemed so endless.

Only the victor ever learned the truth.

Now I'm starting to wonder. Is that what they're doing to me here? Or is the pain of this torture just so terrible that I can't even keep track of how much time is really passing?

I'm guessing it's that one. My torturers definitely don't seem like they're fighting any undue exhaustion.

I'm the only one who's having to do that.

Still, through all the hours of pain and fatigue, I somehow keep silent. No matter what they do to me, I still keep silent.

I know why I can. I'm fighting for Katniss. There's no way I can let myself do anything but succeed.

* * *

It's the end of the day. Finally, after all these hours, it's the end.

I've made it. I didn't let them use my voice to hurt Katniss. I didn't scream, or sob, or cry out in pain.

And I didn't answer their questions. I didn't let them use me to hurt my other friends, either.

The only thing they've managed to do, all this endless day, has been to massively hurt _me._

Which means I've won. For now.

My second day in the arena is over.

I almost can't believe it when they put their weapons away. Is there _really_ such a thing as this day being over?

Apparently there is.

The Peacekeeper is standing over me with his hands empty now. He looks as if he's about to say something, but finally he just shakes his head and walks away. I hear the door opening and closing as he leaves.

His assistants are still here. But not to hurt me. At least, not for now.

They briefly, unfeelingly care for my body as they did this morning. I almost can't get down the watery gruel they feed me, but I know I need it to survive. And I'm still determined to do that. Not only to resist them, but to _live._

I want so much to live. No matter how much pain I have to go through before I'm free.

When one of the men gives me water, I feel like I can't get enough of it. I'm so terribly thirsty! I'm drinking it so fast I start to feel lightheaded.

He takes the straw away much too soon. But after a minute, he gives it back. And then I understand.

_I'll get sick if I drink too much too fast. Especially with everything else that's happening to me. I'll get sick... and they don't want to clean me up._

Getting sick won't help _me,_ either.

I pause, even though I desperately want to keep gulping down the water as fast as I can. I look up at the man who's holding it for me.

"I understand," I tell him shakily. "I can't drink it too fast. I'll watch myself."

He gives me a hard look. It's sort of a surprised look, too, as if he'd forgotten I'm a person who can speak and reason. Then he nods. "All right," he says.

That's all. But he doesn't take the straw away again. He lets me handle it myself, slowly drinking the water I need without making my body ill, while the other man completes his work of cleaning me and letting me use that bedpan.

Finally, they switch my bizarre hospital gown for a new one. It seems they don't want me wearing my own dried blood indefinitely.

There are snaps at the shoulders, it turns out, just like on a normal hospital gown. So they don't have to unfasten my wrists to exchange the garments.

It's so perfectly convenient.

Then, with their tasks completed, they leave. On their way out the door, of course, they shut out the lights. And I'm left alone in total darkness with my thoughts.

I'm imagining Katniss locked in that awful arena. Trapped among those strange jungle trees. She doesn't know them. They're not the trees from her home. Not the ones she grew up climbing. Who knows what lurks among them that she doesn't know?

But Katniss can handle it. It doesn't matter what animals are hiding among those trees. It doesn't matter what plants or poisons are waiting for her. Katniss is a hunter. She can deal with it.

No, it's what lurks in the Gamemakers' minds that makes me so afraid for her.

I know what they've done in some of the earlier Games. Volcanoes, landslides, attacks by unnaturally focused beasts like last year's mutts...

I shiver inside at the memory of what those mutts did to Katniss and Peeta and Cato just by their appearance. Because they weren't just any mutts. They appeared to be the tributes who had already fallen in the Games that year. The ones who had already died.

Only the Gamemakers had twisted and changed them into the shapes of some kind of ferocious wolves.

The cameras focused in on Katniss' face so clearly when she saw the mutt who looked like Rue. Katniss was horrified. Her beautiful silver eyes were so heartbroken. Her face looked so angry and sick and so full of sadness that I wanted to scream, and cry, and punch a fist through the screen in fury.

And it was showing on every TV screen in the world. No one had any right to show Katniss' private feelings to all of Panem like that.

But that's what the Games are all about.

I remember sitting alone in my living room, watching the Games as she went through everything. Wishing I could somehow be right there with her to hold her hands and comfort her like I did just before the Games. Wishing I could jump between her and the things that were hurting her.

But I couldn't. I had already designed her costumes for the chariot ride and the interviews. I had already given her all the comfort and advice I could. My role in the Seventy-fourth Hunger Games, as her stylist, had ended.

Now I was only a spectator.

When those mutts came out, when Katniss came face to face with the one who seemed like Rue, I was leaning forward in my chair with my fists clenched. Katniss was appalled.

At the same time, I could tell there was a huge part of her that wanted desperately for that to _really_ be Rue.

And this year's mutts are even worse.

_The jabberjays._

* * *

I can't sleep. I'm lying here staring into the darkness, hearing the voices of those awful jabberjays over and over in my mind.

_And is Katniss hearing the same thing? Are her friends and her sister still screaming in _her_ mind, over and over, without pause?_

I can't sleep. I can't stop thinking about it.

How long have I been lying here awake? At least an hour, certainly.

_Or maybe... ten minutes? Or half the night?_

I just don't know. I'm so confused by the awful things that time has started doing here. Slowing, speeding, twisting in on itself. I can't keep track, and I can't figure it out.

The only thing I know for sure is that tomorrow is coming. And that I'm scared of it.

I'm more scared of tomorrow than I've ever been of anything in my life. At least, for myself.

I'm so tired and hurting so badly, even now that they've stopped torturing me for the night, that I just don't see how I can go on. But I have to.

The first thing I have to do is sleep. So I can face tomorrow. But how can I sleep when Katniss is trapped in the arena with those awful jabberjays, when I don't know if she even knows yet that those terrible, agonizing voices they attacked her with were fake?

I recognized Prim's voice right away. I knew it from when she screamed and fought to reach Katniss at the reaping. It almost ripped my heart out of my chest to hear it today, even after I realized it wasn't really Prim.

_How must Katniss have felt, thinking that it really was?_

I can't think like this. My heart is pounding so hard. I'll never get to sleep at this rate. And if I don't sleep, I won't be able to protect Katniss.

So I do the hardest, most terrible thing in the world I can think of. I don't think about her.

Or I try not to. But it's impossible. Every second, lying here in the darkness, I'm seeing another image of Katniss miserable and afraid in the arena. She's so brave, and she's so fierce and powerful and ready to fight everything with her head up and her arrows drawn. But she's still afraid and miserable. I know. There's no other way she could feel in the arena.

And it's horrifying me so much to think about it that there's no way I could sleep.

_So if I'm going to be thinking about Katniss anyway,_ I tell myself,_ I'll think of her another way. I'll think of her when she was somewhere closer to being happy._

_ I'll think about the moments when I'd given her something beautiful._

A vision of Katniss in the jeweled dress I made for her last year, the one that lit up like fire when she moved. That's what fills my mind first. A bright memory of the moment I first showed it to her. The moment she opened her eyes and they lit up with surprise at what she was seeing. When she gasped in wonder and her head turned to face me.

I remember how her eyes were so flooded with amazement.

She was so lovely then. She's always lovely. But I think she didn't realize how lovely she can be until that moment.

It's amazing to know that I was able to give Katniss that gift. Because really, all my creation did was to show her another way to look at herself. It didn't change what was already there.

My flaming dress design only showed that beauty to the world. And to Katniss.

Now I'm seeing one image after another of Katniss in the dozens of outfits I've made for her. All the times she's looked so happy and so wondering at the way I've made something she loves so much.

The yellow candlelight dress. The Mockingjay. The elegant dresses and formal styles of the Victory Tour. And one that I think was one of Katniss' favorites, the one I tossed at her when we were joking around so happily just before the Tour started: that outfit with the long black pants and the blue-patterned sweater, the softest sweater I've ever knit...

And somewhere in the middle of that stream of beautiful images, in spite of all the pain and terror I'm still facing, I fall into a night of unaccountably beautiful dreams.

All of them - beautiful, happy, and peaceful - are about Katniss.


	5. Chapter 5

Author's Note:

You know what? I'm declaring AU on a couple things in the canon timeline. This story is going to be AU anyway, and the timing of a few canon events is not working for me. So I'm changing it. The same things are going to happen, but in a couple of cases, they won't happen exactly _when_ the books said they did.

Such as the prep team's escape from the Capitol. I already mentioned that in my first chapter. I think there's no way Cinna would have left them in danger by letting them stay there as long as they did in canon. He would have made sure they got out before he ever presented his Mockingjay design.

There will be at least one other canon event that I'm changing the timing for, in a later chapter. I'll mention it when I get there, so as to avoid giving you any spoilers now.

And then, of course, after Cinna is free and starts to interact with the rest of Panem again, the plotline of _Into My Work_ will start going in a different direction from canon entirely.

I hope that made sense!

Now on another note: I wish I could say my audio version was ready, but I've just spent an hour and a half working on it and only have the first four minutes sounding presentable. So, in the interest of posting this chapter before you all fall asleep for the night (and in the larger scale, in the interest of this story being written as quickly as possible), I'm leaving the audio project for another time. IDK when I'll get to it, but I'll tell you when I do. For now, I'm going to be putting my time and energy into updating this fanfic itself.

Well, Merry Christmas, everyone! Even though getting to read about Cinna being hurt is an _unusual_ Christmas present, to say the least. Still, for me, it definitely beats canon... So, well, here's the chapter!

* * *

I awaken from beauty into panic.

The images of Katniss, laughing and relaxed, wearing the beautiful clothes I've made for her -

They all shatter around me. Instead of my peaceful dreams, I'm left with the savage reality that right now, Katniss is in the arena and fighting for her life.

_And not just fighting for her life._

She's also being tortured by those awful jabberjays. Even if the muttated birds aren't attacking her right this minute, she's still got to be feeling the pain of it.

Just like I am. Only worse. Because the Gamemakers are doing their best to make Katniss believe it's really true.

My heart is pounding with horror as I think about it.

Again, my mind replays the TV broadcast that the Peacekeeper showed me yesterday. Prim's frantic screams of agony. Katniss, racing to save her. The despair and horror when she realized it was a recording and Prim was out of reach.

Then all the other voices. The whole vicious attack. All the pain they made my Katniss feel.

_ The whole awful thing. And now they want to use me to make it even worse for her._

The awful video continues to play in my mind. Now, I'm seeing Katniss curled up on the ground next to Finnick, trying not to hear the terrible, agonized cries of everyone she loves.

_ Everyone but me. The Gamemakers have a different plan for _my_ voice._

Because the other voices weren't real. They were faked, taken from ordinary recordings and twisted into cries of pain. And the Gamemakers are worried Katniss might realize this.

So they don't want Katniss to hear me screaming in pain until it's real. Then they can make her think the other voices were real, too.

Because I'm really here, in this prison. They've really been torturing me, and they're going to keep torturing me. And they want to show her the videos of that, to make her think everyone else she loves is being tortured too.

Only they want me to actually start screaming, first. They want to make me lose my control and break my silence. Then they want to make a jabberjay really sound like me, and send it to Katniss, and then show her the videos to prove it was true.

It's completely, utterly sick. I can't believe anyone would want to do something that horrible. But they do want to. And they want me to let them do it.

_I won't let them!_ A blazing outrage explodes from my heart. There's no way I'll let them do that to Katniss.

So there's only one thing I can do. I have to stay completely calm.

Because now I don't just have to protect my friends by keeping silent about the rebellion. I have to protect Katniss by keeping _completely_ silent and not crying out, no matter what they do to me.

And for that, I need to be calm. So that's what I focus on.

It's a good thing I've always been good at being calm. I'm definitely drawing on that steadiness now.

_Slow... calm... quiet._ My breathing is slow and relaxed now. My heartbeat is steady. I'm not going to let anything shake me.

_I never let anything shake me. Today is going to be just the same._

The only problem is, I'm still so terribly scared.

* * *

I've been awake for probably ten minutes. As far as I can tell. It's been a little while, anyway. Long enough for me to really wake up, and realize what's going on, and start trying to force myself to accept it.

Which is kind of inevitable, since there's no way in the world I can stop thinking about it.

_This is my third day in the arena. In this awful torture arena. And now the Gamemakers have thrown in a horrible twist._

I'm not just being tortured for information anymore. Now, they want to use me to hurt Katniss too.

Which means that my keeping silent is not just about my own dignity anymore. It just got a lot more important than that.

So why am I not panicking?

I'm feeling surprisingly calm. Even more than I expected. I don't know why, exactly, since I should be frantic. But I'm just calm.

Maybe it's because of the beautiful dreams I had last night. Lying here in the darkness now, I can still see Katniss, smiling and peaceful. Wearing that soft blue sweater, or those lovely dresses. Relaxed and laughing, sitting in a chair, talking easily with me.

I can almost imagine that she isn't in the arena at all. And I can almost keep from thinking at all about where I am.

In _my_ arena.

Waiting for my third day here to start.

* * *

The door opens. The light comes on. It's time.

_All right,_ I think, even though my heart is beating slightly faster. _I've got this._

The Peacekeeper's assistants come in. By themselves this time.

Again, they feed me and take care of me physically. Again, when they give me the water, they let me handle myself and control my own pacing. I'm still careful, even though I'm eager to get as much as I can this time. I know how terrible it's going to be, having to wait until tonight for more.

The rest of how terrible today is going to be...

I'm still just barely managing not to quite think about that. Not yet.

The Peacekeeper comes into the room. He stands over me. "Well?" he asks me. "Are you feeling any differently now that you've had a night to think about it? Now that you know what a full day of this feels like?"

He smiles cruelly and almost laughs. "It's a little different from two hours, isn't it?"

"It's a lot different," I tell him. "I wish I didn't have to face it again. But there's nothing I can tell you."

"You're really stuck on that one, aren't you?" he says. "All right. I'll admit I'm impressed, but it's not going to get you anywhere. You're not just facing another day or two, you know. President Snow has authorized me to keep you here as long as it takes."

And now I'm feeling this horrible, freezing chill inside. Because suddenly I'm face to face with the full horror of this. Of what I've been trying not to think about.

He's forcing me to think about it now.

_As long as it takes..._

It's completely terrible. Hours and days and weeks of this, stretching out before me. It won't matter how much it hurts or how hard I have to fight, I'll still be here.

He's going to keep trying and trying, for days or weeks or however long, to make me betray my friends.

_Which I'll never do. Of course I won't._

And that knowledge is suddenly making me feel better.

_It doesn't matter how much they hurt me. They won't be able to make me hurt my friends._

And they won't be able to make me hurt Katniss. I won't give them that tape they want for their awful jabberjays. No matter what they do to me, I won't cry out.

So if they hurt _me..._ that's all right. No matter how long or how badly they hurt me, it's still all right. Because I won't let them hurt anyone else.

The Peacekeeper is watching my eyes. He's looking for fear. For horror and despair at what he's just said to me.

Maybe he's seen all of those, but I won't let him see only that. I stare coldly back at him.

"I don't know anything else," I tell him. "And I won't let you use me to hurt Katniss. You're completely wasting your time."

* * *

I'm feeling strong today. Not just calm, not just determined, but strong.

Even once they start to hurt me, I'm still feeling strong. Powerful and confident and strong. There's no way they can break me.

It doesn't take me long to realize that I'm feeling more than strong. I'm feeling creative. Wildly, massively, passionately creative.

It's almost unbelievable. How could I be feeling this way, with everything that's going on? With all the pain I'm feeling right at this minute? With my fear and grief and horror for Katniss?

But there's no mistaking it. I know what this is. I've felt this so many times, and it's exactly the same thing now.

This is one of my wildly creative days.

I'm going to be fighting to handle this tide of inspiration all day long.

It's going to be hard. But it's going to be wonderful.

It's hard when I can't stop to make any sketches. How can I, when my hands are clamped into these hard cuffs and pinned down like this? It's unimaginably frustrating. But it isn't slowing down my imagination. My mind won't stop coming up with ideas for one amazing design after another.

I'm glad. I love having ideas.

Now I just have to hang on to them.

I start running them through my mind over and over again. It slows down the flow of new ideas, but it's helping me hang on to these.

And suddenly I'm realizing something very clearly.

_I have to get through this as fast as I can. I have to get out of here so I can create these things._

I have to survive.

I have to escape.

Not just for me. Not even just for Katniss.

But for the chance to create my designs. For the chance to act on my imagination.

For my work.

* * *

So far, I'm doing very well at not screaming with the pain of my torture.

But what happens when I want to scream aloud at the pain of not creating?

It's the first time in my life I've had to ask myself that kind of a question. Because I've never been prevented from creating before. This is completely new to me, and I'm finding out I vastly, passionately hate it.

I can't do anything with my hands pinned down like this. It's so terrifying. It's terrible because I want so badly to create something. I just want to pick up a needle and thread and start sewing. I want to sit with my head bent over some project, totally relaxed, at peace, not being hurt...

It's not even about not being hurt. Not really. It's about the creation itself. Right now, I just overwhelmingly feel a need to do this. To create _something!_ I need to cut and sew pieces of fabric. I need to choose colors and patterns and designs. I need to create makeup palettes to go with the outfits. Hairstyles. Sets of jewelry. Accessories.

All the different things that go into my styles.

All the things I'm imagining in my mind right now. The constant flood of ideas that, for the first time in my life, I'm not able to do anything about.

And at the same time, for the first time in my life, there's this awful, physical pain that's just so very much worse than anything I ever even imagined. And I'm not able to do anything about that part, either. Because they've got me clamped down to this stupid table and they're torturing me. And I'm not _supposed_ to be able to do anything about that.

So now I'm dealing with fear, too. Who knows how long I'm going to be here, facing all of this? Completely trapped?

_ Just like Katniss is trapped._

They've got me locked up in this awful room. But they've got Katniss locked up in that awful arena, and that's worse. Suddenly I don't care what they do to me...

Or I wish I didn't care. But it just hurts so badly. All of it. And the ideas still won't stop coming. Even though I'm starting to feel completely overwhelmed. I'm just feeling too many different things at once and it's really wearing me out.

Which is dangerous, when I need to keep making sure I am strong enough to resist all this pain.

I'm fighting for control. It's hard because I'm still in so much pain. Pain in my body, pain in my heart. Pain for Katniss that's so bad, I feel like I could die from it.

And always, always the relentless pain in my body. Rising up like a cloud and doing its best to block out everything else.

If I could really create something, maybe it would be easier. It always helps me, when I'm able to send what I'm feeling into the creation of one of my designs.

_Just give me an hour with my hands and any kind of material!_ I think in frustration. But I have nothing except my thoughts echoing around inside my head, alongside the relentless pain. Finally I feel myself starting to lose it.

It's completely maddening. I can't keep up the strain indefinitely. I just can't. I don't have the energy for all this artistry.

Not when I can't even act on it. Not when it's all trapped inside my head.

I hate this. I've never felt this way before in my life. I've always had the chance to create when I needed to. Now I can't. I'm feeling so very trapped and I don't know what to do with it.

It hurts terribly.

* * *

As the hours go by, I'm starting to get very discouraged.

I'm starting to get even more overwhelmed than before by the sheer mass of ideas I'm having. It's tiring and frightening. I can't make any sketches. I can't even stop to make one- or two-word notes to remind me of them later, the way I do sometimes when my thoughts are moving faster than my hand can draw.

Like now. Only my hand can't draw at all right now. It can only clench uselessly at my side. Not in pain, but in sheer frustration at not being able to create. Not being able to hold a threaded needle, or a pencil, or a scissors, and make something of all these thoughts that are filling my mind.

So, yes. In pain.

Because I don't know about anyone else, but I'm finding out it's actually painful for me not to be able to create.

And the flood of ideas is still coming. How will I ever be able to hold on to them all?

I don't know. I'm just going to have to try.

And I won't be able to hold them consciously in my thoughts, either. Not for -

My mind balks at the old fear of the question: _How long?_

Not for _however_ long. I'm going to have to ask my mind to hold on to them, and give them back to me when the time is right.

_But what if that time never comes? What if they kill me first?_ I keep coming back to that thought, round and round in a circle. It's so frustrating.

Even more than that, it's so very terrifying.

I was willing to give up my life, if I had to. I still am. But what hurts even more than that is the thought of never being able to make anything ever again.

Still, I'm willing to give that up, too. I have to be.

It's just that thinking about it hurts me so very much.

* * *

I'm scared and tired. It's just so hard to face all of this. And just like yesterday, I have no clear idea of how much time is really going by.

But finally, the day really ends. I'm left alone again, tired and discouraged from all those hours of pain, and thwarted inspiration, and all the fear and horror I've been feeling all day long for Katniss, and _everything._ Just everything.

I'm so exhausted. And now, just when I want to relax and try to find some peace and fall asleep, I'm finding out that there is one more thing that's going to be hurting me.

Of course I'm still being hurt. What did I expect? To be locked up and tortured, and _not_ have to constantly be feeling pain?

_That wouldn't have made any sense,_ I think in tired, bitter frustration. _Of course not. So of course I'm being hurt right now._

And of all things, I'm being hurt by this ridiculous table.

It's starting to get very painful just to lie on this table. That's not something I would have expected, but it's true. The prolonged contact with this hard surface, in itself, is starting to hurt me.

I try to shift around a little, to find a more comfortable position, but it's no use. The flat, smooth surface actually seems to be biting into my back. Especially at my shoulderblades. It's hurting my elbows and my heels, too, and everyplace else where my bones are closest to the surface of my skin.

_That's what's happening,_ I realize. _My skin and muscles are getting pinched between my bones and the hard surface of the table..._ The very thought hurts.

Again, I try to shift, because I know that this can't be good for me. But there's no way I can do anything about it. The slight movements I'm able to make are just causing me even more pain. Wincing inside, I just give up and lie here.

I'm completely unhappy and frustrated. My back is stinging more than ever, and it's gradually building into a deep ache beneath the stinging. This is such a slow, persistent kind of pain. It's different from the sharp, crushing attacks they keep using against me. It's just so constant and in a way it's worse.

It's very strange. I expected this table was just going to be the _place_ where they hurt me. Instead, it's turning out to be one of the things that's actually causing me pain.

My torturers may or may not have intended it this way, but this table is actually a weapon in itself.


	6. Chapter 6

The next morning, my torturer doesn't bring any of the vicious, ugly weapons from his cabinet when he walks over to hurt me. All he's holding is a long syringe with a gleaming, sharp needle.

Instantly, all my senses flare up in warning. This is not good. He's only brought that thing because he thinks it'll be more effective than anything else...

I try to prepare myself and I don't even know what I'm preparing myself for. He's going to inject me with that awful syringe, that's certain. There's no way I'll be able to stop him. But what is it going to do to me?

It's going to cause me pain. Terrible pain. That's the only thing I know for sure.

My eyes are locked on that needle. I can't tear them away. I don't know if I want to. It's terrible because it's such a small, simple thing and yet I know instinctively that it's going to cause me such agony.

It's the most terrifying weapon I've ever seen in his hand.

Such effectiveness in total simplicity. It's like the simple, classic lines of my own designs.

_No, it's not!_ I think in furious terror. _No it's not, no it's not, I don't want to think this way!_

But I'm too tired and too afraid to be able to hold back this one more horrible comparison. And naturally, it leads right back into the ones I've already been fighting not to think. His weapons and my sewing kits, his cruel assistants and my loving prep team, his expertise and mine...

This awful stylist is going to create me right into a style of pain. And I won't be able to get out of it.

The Peacekeeper just stands over me and stares for the longest time. He doesn't say anything. Finally he steps a little closer and speaks.

"We're going to try something different this morning, Cinna," he tells me. "You might want to prepare yourself. Of course, it would be an even better idea to just decide to finally talk to me. You really don't want to face this one, Cinna. If I do this and you decide to talk, there's no antidote. You're going to be in pain for at least half the day whether you decide you can't stand it or not."

His words send a deep shiver through me. I'm still staring at that needle and now I'm even more terrified. Still, I find the strength to speak. He may be able to scare me half out of my mind, but he can't take my dignity. I'm the only one who's in control of that and I won't let him.

"I don't have anything I can say to you," I tell him. My voice is steady in spite of the terrible shaking that's starting deep inside my chest. "I can't tell you what you want to know, no matter what you threaten me with, because I don't know any of it myself. Can't you understand that?"

Of course, I'm still lying.

I have a feeling my Peacekeeper friend here knows that as well as I do.

He shakes his head and scowls at me.

"Then get ready. It's going to be bad."

I already knew that.

Reaching across my trapped body with his left hand, he pinches a section of the front of my upper left arm between his fingers. The grip is hard and cruel, hurting me in itself.

It would be painful even if there wasn't already a deep, aching bruise there. It's even worse because I know what's coming.

I want to shrink away, but there's no place to go. I'm already pinned flat against this horrible table. Still, I find I'm pressing myself back as hard as I can.

It only gives me maybe a quarter of an inch. It does me no good at all. But it gives him an even clearer picture of my fear. I hate that, but he smiles.

Then, terrifyingly quickly, his smile fades. I'm not even entertaining to him anymore, not for more than a few seconds at a time.

It's a very bad sign.

It's like when a tribute is no longer 'entertaining' in the Hunger Games. That's when the Gamemakers either step things up or make a move to take that tribute out.

Right now, my Gamemaker is stepping things up.

"All right, Cinna," my torturer says in a hard, angry voice. "Maybe this will get you to talk. I'm tired of you playing around."

He stabs the needle into my arm. I feel it biting deep, but that pain is almost trivial. I'm scared, though, and that makes it harder to handle.

He pushes down the plunger, slowly. At first I don't feel anything more. Then there's a slow trickle of liquid warmth inside my muscle. I watch, suddenly even more fearful, as he pulls the needle out and sets the empty syringe aside. He presses hard, cruel fingers against the place where he injected me and starts to remorselessly massage the spot.

Sudden pain explodes from the site.

Then it starts jumping to more and more places in my body. Never leaving one place, but just adding more. I gasp and feel my body going tense, pressing against the table.

Whatever was in that syringe, it's attacking my nerves.

Suddenly my whole body is on fire with searing pain. I'm defenseless, fighting not to scream as the bright, seething wash of pain attacks me from the inside out.

I don't know what it is that he's injected me with. All I know is that it hurts unimaginably.

And my brain just took _that_ as a challenge.

I'm an artist. Of course, my mind tries to find something to imagine that I can relate this to. And I find it, not in my own experience - which holds nothing like this, even now - but in an image from the Hunger Games that Katniss fought in last year.

I can imagine this might be what a massive attack with tracker jacker venom might feel like. I imagine this is what Glimmer might have felt. Glimmer, the girl from District One. I remember how she writhed and screamed on the ground when Katniss dropped that nest of tracker jackers right on top of her.

Glimmer must have felt such agony. Her body was twisting and pressing against the ground so hard. She'd been attacked by hundreds of tracker jackers at once, right out of a sound sleep. I remember staring at the screen in horror, overwhelmed by the sight of this young girl being in so much pain.

Even though I was so fiercely hoping for Katniss to win. Even though Katniss had just delivered a devastating strike against her enemies.

It didn't matter. Glimmer was hurting so much I wished I could just jump into the screen and cradle her in my arms to soothe her pain away. I remember having an image leap into my mind, of her family clinging to each other and screaming in anguish for her as they were forced to watch.

There was no way I could imagine the kind of pain Glimmer was feeling. I knew that. I tried, and failed. Now, I think I can imagine it. It would take an experience like this for me to have any chance of beng able to relate to hers.

It's like this. Tracker jacker venom would feel exactly like this.

For a moment I wonder. _Is_ this tracker jacker venom? But no. It isn't causing me any hallucinations. My mind is clear, aside from this awful torrent of agony.

No hallucinations. Just pain.

It's so much pain that I don't feel like my body and mind are able to handle it. And that brings me suddenly face to face with a paralyzing new fear.

Is it possible to feel so much pain that you die just from that? Because right now, I'm hurting so much that I feel like that could happen. I'm so tense. I'm rocked by waves of pain. My body feels like it's about to literally tear itself apart with the awful flaming agony I'm feeling.

All my nerves, all my senses are alive with the need to be free of this pain. Could my body just decide to stop, no matter what _I_ want, just stop breathing and stop living so this slamming rockslide of pain could end? Could my heart just _stop_ instead of beating one more time through this torture?

I'm so scared by that. So terribly scared that I'm almost panicking. My thoughts are racing. There's too much I want to live for! Could I just die right now, in spite of that? No matter _what_ I want? Is it possible?

I don't know. But I won't let it be. Not for me.

My fists are suddenly clenched, and I can feel my eyes blazing with furious determination as I stare at the hard white ceiling. I'm fighting this now with all my strength. I'm fighting so hard that I almost don't feel the pain at all now as anything but a part of my fury.

I'm going to _live!_

* * *

As the Peacekeeper promised, I'm locked in this flaming pain for hours. It's incredibly hard to stand it.

_I can't - what am I doing - what am I going to do?_ My thoughts are fragmented. Dizzy. I can't focus. I feel like I'm being pulled apart.

_Wait. This is what... I decided. I'm going to fight like an artist. I have to create something!_

Desperately, I try to think of a design. Something to focus my mind. The image of some kind of a fur coat flashes through my mind, then it's gone. A blue dress... a man's formal suit...

I try to hold on to them. I try to pick something and stay with it. But my thoughts are flyaway, scattered and uncertain. Patterns and designs are fragmenting as soon as I think of them. There's just too much pain. I never imagined there could be this much pain in all the world.

Or that I would be feeling all of it.

_Don't be ridiculous, Cinna!_ I tell myself. _Of course you're not feeling all the pain in the world!_

But right now I feel like I am.

* * *

It's hours later, again. At least, I think it's been hours. I'm still in pain. The awful toxin from that injection hasn't abated yet.

My thoughts are getting a little clearer, though. Maybe the pain _is_ fading a little. Or maybe I'm just gradually learning how to handle it better. It's been so unchanging for so long, after all.

Either way, I'm feeling steadier. But the pain is still so bad that I'm only partly holding it back.

The Peacekeeper is still standing over me. He's been standing here all this time, not moving, just looking down at me with a total lack of sympathy for my agony. Which is only natural, considering that he's the one who's deliberately choosing to cause it.

"Well, Cinna?" he asks me. "Are you ready to talk?"

_Talk?_

I can't trust myself to say a single word through this much pain. Pressing my lips together, I glare at him and shake my head.

_There's nothing I can tell you!_ I'm saying with my eyes. _No matter how many times you ask me!_ I can't talk right now, but I'm thinking the words at him as hard as I can, furious and exhausted from all this pain.

And suddenly I realize there is something very wrong.

I'm making a huge mistake.

This man is carefully watching my face. He's watching my eyes. And I'm realizing all at once what he's seeing there.

Bravery. That's what he's seeing.

And that's what's telling him that I have something to hide.

Because this cruel Peacekeeper, my torturer, is seeing my brave determination to keep silent. Not just silent for Katniss, but silent about the rebellion too. He's seeing it written all over my face and pouring out from my eyes. He must be.

And here I thought I was doing a good job of keeping my emotions under wraps.

Apparently not.

He's seeing everything. Or at least everything he needs.

I'm starting to think this man is as good at his job as I am at mine.

That's a very terrifying thought. Considering the circumstances.

* * *

Finally, my pain starts to gradually ebb away. The Peacekeeper is still standing here. He must be able to see the difference, because his face suddenly gets even harder and more alert.

"All right," he says harshly. "Now would you like to try making sense and just answer my questions, Cinna? It's not that complicated. Who are you working with? What is going on in the rebellion?"

He's firing the questions at me really fast. He seems angrier than I've ever seen him. I can't help wondering if it's all about my continued defiance... or if there's something else going on.

_Have the rebels done something, and he's angry with me for not telling him about it?_

The thought fills me with a surprisingly vivid hope, even as my torturer continues to hammer me with his relentless questions. If the rebellion has done something to make him this angry... then for me, that's a very good thing. It may not help me personally, but it means that my side is striking a blow for victory.

And that does help me personally. A lot. Because now, I'm feeling more than ever like all of this is worth it.

_ Apparently, my Mockingjay dress really has inspired people to fight back!_

_ I wonder what they're doing?_

Because that's the ironic thing here. If the rebellion really has made some dramatic move today, I really don't know about it.

Just like Haymitch said. Just like we all planned. And I'm glad I don't know. Because the less I know, the less there's any risk of my torturers finding out.

Not that I'd ever let that happen anyway.

When the Peacekeeper pauses in his rapid, angry questioning, I just look at him for a second before I answer.

"I don't know anything," I say quietly and calmly, even though my body is still shaking and tense with a considerable amount of pain.

There's no point in saying any more than that.

The Peacekeeper's face contorts with rage. For a moment, I wonder if he's going to strike me with his fist again, like he did the other day. But he keeps control of himself.

"Very well," he says coldly. "I am tired of you for now. My men can handle this for a while, I think."

As if on cue, his two assistants walk in the door. And of course, undoubtedly they were watching from outside and waiting for him to call them. I suddenly envision a small television monitor, mounted on the wall just outside the door to this awful room, so they can watch me and decide exactly when to come in.

There probably is.

The Peacekeeper nods to his men. His face is still hard and angry. "Take over," he tells them simply, in a voice that's just as hard as the look on his face. Then, without another word, he turns on his heel and leaves.

Without wasting a moment, the other two men get out that horrible drawer of weapons from the tool chest. Coldly and uncaringly, they start to attack me again.

Leaving the Peacekeeper free for whatever else he might have planned for this afternoon.

_Apparently,_ I think with a shiver of sick horror as always at the comparison,_ it's sometimes very convenient for him to have a prep team._

* * *

The Peacekeeper's been gone a lot longer than I expected. It's still just his cruel assistants torturing me. Not that they need any help. They're almost as good at viciously causing me pain as he is.

But what is he doing? I only expected him to leave for a little while. Instead, it's starting to look like he's taken the rest of the day off.

_Not,_ I think in hollow frustration, _that _I_ get to do that._

But I wish I could. This is just taking so very long. And on top of the pain from my actual torture, my back is starting to really hurt again from lying on this table. It's gone beyond stinging and aching, into this sharp, grating sort of pain that I've never felt before from anything.

_Who knew this horrible table was going to start hurting me almost worse than everything else?_

I'm starting to get very, very tired from all this pain. I'm getting so tired that I almost can't keep my thoughts together.

No, it's more than that. I'm not just _getting_ tired. I've been tired for a while. And I still have far too much of this day left to face. How many hours has it been? Not enough for the day to be over, surely. I'm starting to learn that it's always so much longer than it feels like it should be, before one of these horrible days really ends.

Still, even though I'm learning to expect it, the awful length of this day is hard to accept. And even harder to deal with. It feels like this is taking so much longer than it possibly, really could. There just can't be this many hours in a single day.

_It's all right,_ I tell myself. _I can handle it, and then it will be over._

Over? But what about tomorrow?

I can't think about that. I just can't. Because if I start thinking like that, I might get too discouraged and frightened to keep fighting. And I won't let that happen.

There's too much at stake here. This may be some bizarre kind of an arena, and I may be a tribute, but I'm fighting for more than just my own life. I'm fighting for the lives and safety of all my friends in the rebellion. The lives and freedom of everyone in Panem.

And I'm fighting for Katniss. Because of that horrible, horrible plan with the jabberjays. The Gamemakers and my torturers really think I'm going to allow them to do that to Katniss?

They're completely wrong.

_They're _not_ going to use me to hurt her! There's no way! I won't let them!_

So I won't cry out. I won't answer any questions. And I won't think about tomorrow until it happens.

I just won't.

* * *

I do not like violence. It's bothered me ever since I was little.

A memory from years ago comes to mind, surfacing through the pain I'm feeling now. I was eight years old. I remember sitting cross-legged on the carpet at home, watching that year's edition of the Hunger Games with sick fascination. It was the same every year, once I got old enough to figure out what was going on. I hated it, and it scared me. Not for me, but for the kids in the arena.

Because they _were_ kids. Like me. They were _people,_ like me. And they were being hurt so very badly, and in the end, each year, all but one of them was killed.

I hated it. I hated it passionately. But I could never look away. I was glued to the screen every minute, hour after hour, unable to tear my eyes or my mind away from what was happening to those frightened, angry tributes.

And my dad seriously did not get it.

That day, we had several adult guests who'd come over to watch the Games with us. It wasn't unusual. The Hunger Games, for the people of the Capitol, are a favorite opportunity for fun, socializing, and even parties.

I hated that part too. Not the parties or the friends coming over, but the fact that it was for such a horrible reason.

But apparently, my dad had completely missed the fact that I hated the Games at all. He mistook my horrified absorption for something else entirely.

"Cinna loves his Hunger Games!" he said, sounding as if he was proud of me and thought I was being really cute, all at the same time.

Everyone in the room shared a big laugh. Everyone but me.

I looked up seriously, turning to face all of them. They thought I loved the Games? That wasn't right. That wasn't it at all!

I knew it wasn't a good idea to say too much about how horrible the Hunger Games were. My mom had taught me that years before. It scared her too much when I said anything about that, and I didn't like to scare her. But still, I couldn't let this one go.

Staring up at my parents and our friends, I tried to explain. "I don't. I just want to know."

They all laughed again. "Try to figure out an eight year old!" one woman said, not with any kind of meanness but just as if the whole situation was cute.

They completely didn't get it. There's nothing cute about the Hunger Games and there never has been. I've known that since I was three years old.

Unhappily, I turned to face the screen again. And spent the rest of the evening watching those terrified children hurt and kill each other.

No, I've never liked violence. It's completely sick and horrible. I wish there was no such thing as violence in the whole world.

My breath catches in my throat as my torturers' weapons cut sharp lines of pain across my body.

Violence.

It's ironic that so much of it is happening to me now.

But in a way, it's not ironic at all, is it? Because this is what I decided. I'd rather the violence happens to me than that it keeps happening to other people.

I'd rather face this pain myself, by choice, than watch another year of tributes being forced to face pain and death in the arena.

Or another twenty years of tributes, or eighty. Or live a comfortable, easy life and then die of old age, knowing that there will be hundreds of years of more Games. Knowing that there are still dozens of faded envelopes in that old box, with dozens of horrors for an endless string of Quarter Quells. As if the ordinary Games weren't already far more than bad enough.

There's no way I could have lived with myself if I'd just stood aside and let all that continue. If I hadn't joined the rebellion. If I hadn't made the choices that I knew would lead to my being here and probably to my death.

If I hadn't made my Mockingjay design, even though I knew what it would cost me.

No. I made the right choice, and I don't regret it.

Because I just can't value my life above the lives of all those children.

Of course I can't. But I do still really want to survive. And to reach the end of all this.

And I desperately wish I could reach it _now._ It's getting harder and harder for me to stand the thought of being here even one minute longer.

It just hurts so much.

_If only I could just get out of here,_ I'm thinking now. _Just get up off this table and walk right out through the door. And not be here any more._

_ Not be hurt any more. And not have to keep being scared that I'm going to die._

Now there's a realistic thought.

Getting out of here? Just like that?

Not very likely.

Of course getting out of here would be wonderful. Not being trapped. But I have to face reality. It's not going to happen, at least not anytime soon. The only way I'll get out of here is to survive all this, and who knows how long that could take?

I can't let myself think like that. Besides, I'm not _going_ to just wait and survive. I'm going to escape.

_But how?_

* * *

Author's Note:

Cinna's right. The rebels _did_ just do something major! At midnight last night, they sabotaged the Quarter Quell and pulled Katniss, Finnick, and Beetee out of the arena.

But Cinna doesn't know that. Why would his torturers tell him something like that? So he still thinks Katniss is in the arena, and he's still afraid for her because of it. :(

On another note: I also have a very short oneshot, _Mean,_ that tells what I think happened when Cinna first started to understand what the Hunger Games were about. He's three years old in that story (which I've briefly referred to in this chapter). If you're interested, look it up on my profile! _Mean_ can be read as a stand-alone story, but goes along with the continuity of _Into My Work._ In fact, I originally composed it as a flashback scene for this novel, before I decided to post it as a fic by itself. So, check it out! It really is a part of this same storyline.


	7. Chapter 7

Author's Note:

I'm giving myself three weeks to post my next chapter, instead of two. It'll be out by Wednesday, February 5th. I need the time to work on organizing my notes, so the rest of my writing process can go more smoothly.

All I can say is, I'd been feeling kind of stuck due to the pressure of not feeling like I had time to deal with my notes properly. Then, as soon as I decided to take this extra week, I had a vivid mental image of suddenly getting to open out a sewing project onto a table that was big enough to really lay it out.

Stylist imagery for the win! :) And right after that, I started feeling a lot more unblocked and now I'm able to write more freely again, and faster. So that's how I know I'm doing the right thing here.

I'd also like to take this chance to thank my reviewers! You're all awesome!

And I'd like to personally respond to my loyal anonymous reviewer, Lya200 (since I can't answer you in a private message). Thanks, Lya! :) Your comments mean just as much to me as anyone else's. Thanks for taking the time to read my chapters and leave me reviews, again and again!

I really appreciate your compliment on my imagery in Chapter 3. That's something I'm very proud of, and I'm glad to know you liked it.

And yes, like you said in your latest review, Cinna _does_ hurt very badly in this part of my fanfic. It makes me sad to write it! But it'll be okay. He's going to make it. And by the end of the story, he's going to be very, very happy. I promise, it'll all be worth it!

* * *

The Peacekeeper still isn't here. I guess he isn't planning to come back today at all.

He must really be as tired of me as he said.

He can't be anywhere near as tired of all this as I am, though. It's so exhausting. His assistants are still hurting me. I've been in so much pain for so many hours!

And it feels like it's never going to stop. Just like yesterday. Just like the day before. I'm starting to feel like nothing could be longer than one of these interminable days.

_Just hang in there, Cinna!_ I tell myself. _It's got to be over soon. There's no way this day can last too much longer!_

But they just keep hurting me. Maybe this day is feeling so very long because I'm so tired from the pain of that injection. Maybe just because I was already so worn out from yesterday. I just don't know. All I know is that I'm so very tired...

* * *

Finally, when I've almost forgotten there's even such a thing to hope for, this awful day comes grinding to an end. My torturers lift their weapons away from my injured flesh and set them back into the little drawer.

The sudden lack of pain is almost devastating in its severity. I try to relax, but I can't. I'm so exhausted, and my body keeps tensing up as I remember the awful flaming pain from that injection the Peacekeeper gave me earlier.

My mind is racing. I can't believe how long this day took! I can't believe how much agony I've felt. How much pain I'm still feeling, even though they're not torturing me any more, just from my wounds. And just from my memories of this morning's unbelievable agony, even though it hasn't really left any lasting physical pain behind it.

And I can't believe how scared I am of facing tomorrow.

I've been fighting hard for the past hour, just trying to get through until finally, _finally,_ this day would end. It's always hardest at the end of the day. I'm always so tired by then, so tense and tired from the effort of fighting to keep silent through the pain all day long. All I want is to reach that moment when the agony finally stops for a while. When they put away their weapons. When they leave the room and close the door, leaving me in cool, quiet, restful darkness for the night. Letting me, in spite of my pain, in spite of my fear, finally rest and try to prepare myself for the next terrifying day.

But it turns out that's not going to happen right now.

"Hello again, Cinna," the Peacekeeper says as he walks back into the room. I hear him, as always, before I see him. His footsteps travel slowly toward me until he moves into view.

_ This isn't right,_ I think in confusion._ He isn't supposed to be back. Not yet. Not tonight. Not until tomorrow!_

But he is. He nods to his assistants, taking the drawer of horrors from them, and steps calmly up to stand by my right side. He stands there patiently while his assistants take care of my body.

I look at him, my head turning sideways on the hard table, and I don't think there's any way I'm keeping the fear and confusion from showing all over my face.

The other men finish their tasks and quietly walk away. I hear them leaving. I hear the door closing.

But the Peacekeeper is still here. And he's still holding those weapons.

He doesn't offer me an explanation. He just looks at me, and I can see his eyes absorbing all the fear he must be seeing in my trapped, exhausted face. Without a word, he selects a weapon and holds it up. I recognize the jagged knife he used to hurt me the first day I was here.

I shiver and fight hard to keep from flinching. The whole thing is just so nightmarish.

Maybe that's because I'm so tired I can feel my mind hovering on the edge of a fearful dream already.

I wondered, earlier today, why the Peacekeeper left so early. Why he left me in the hands of his companions, for hours. He'd never done that before.

Now I know why he did it today. It must have been so he could go home and sleep. So he could come back tonight.

Because he's here now. And he's starting to hurt me again.

* * *

I'm terrified. I'm so exhausted that my heart is pounding. And I still can't really make sense of what's going on. Or I don't want to. I don't want to accept that I'm facing something so frightening.

But finally the full horror of what the Peacekeeper is doing here dawns on me. I can't keep from facing it anymore.

Because I'm realizing he's not just torturing me later and later into the night. Not with the focused expression he's wearing.

No...

He and his assistants have carefully planned something worse than that.

They're taking me thirty-six hours without a break.

_ How in the world am I going to survive?_

That question just keeps getting larger in my mind for the next several hours. It's getting harder and harder to fight this. My breathing is very uneven. I keep gasping in air, fighting not to make a sound. He's doing things to me that are more and more painful, and the worst spikes of pain come without warning. It's got me on edge and so frightened that I could almost scream just from the fear.

Only I don't. I'm Cinna. I never show my emotions when I don't want to. That's just how I do things.

I can't stop myself from feeling them, though. And I'm feeling this pain and fear and dizzy exhaustion so strongly that I feel like it might shake me apart.

I need to be asleep so desperately. I'm beyond tired. My brain hurts just from being awake. But my pain won't let me sleep.

_He_ won't let me sleep.

I think of Katniss. I have to make it through this for her. That thought is perfectly clear even in the middle of my exhaustion. Even through the confusion that's starting to cloud all my other thoughts.

_I can't let them break me. I can't let them do who knows what to her with the sound of my voice._

_ I can't let them send her a screaming, terrified Cinna jabberjay... and then show her that it was real so she'll have to think all the rest were too..._

* * *

The Peacekeeper's men come back hours later. Is it morning? It must be. That's the only reason they'd be bringing me the water and the bedpan and everything.

They don't even try to feed me. I guess they know I'd never be able to keep down the gruel when I'm this panicked and exhausted and in this much pain. I barely even manage to get the water down, even though I'm so desperately thirsty. And I'm shaking so hard that the men have to hold my head as well as the straw, or I wouldn't even be able to drink it.

At least the Peacekeeper has stopped hurting me for a minute, to let them take care of me. But as soon as they're done with their tasks, the prep team -

_No!_

_They are not a prep team._

These cruel, vicious men get out weapons and start right in on hurting me themselves. And the Peacekeeper starts torturing me again too.

I'm so tired! How am I going to handle this? My breathing is ragged. I'm fighting so hard not to cry out. I feel like a little child, in so much pain... I'm scared and I just hurt. How am I going to handle this? I feel so very broken -

_There is a difference,_ I decide firmly in the middle of my shaking mind, _between _feeling_ broken and _being_ broken._

And I'm not broken. Not yet.

_ No!_ I tell myself even more fiercely. _Not ever!_

Once again, I remember my imagery of the fabric that no one could tear. The thin, dark green satin with the high tensile strength.

_Maybe this can help me again now!_

I saw something like that in person once. It was a demonstration in one of my classes at stylist college. But I never imagined what it might feel like to actually _be_ that fabric, until I came here and decided to use that imagery to help me survive this torture.

Of course, inevitably, the fabric did finally tear in half. But I'm determined that won't happen to me.

_It can't,_ I tell myself. _Not as long as I'm still hanging on._

And not as long as I am letting myself see all this as inspiration.

I'm letting myself feel this pain and I'm imagining what I might do with it.

_That's right. That's what I decided to do._

Not ignoring it, not trying to block it. Letting myself feel it. Just letting myself take it all in. This whole amazingly vivid experience. All the pain, and all the violently intense images of all the injuries they're doing to my body.

It's still amazing how much less painful anything is when I focus on it visually this way. Even when I'm this tired. When I'm looking at my wounds this way, my mind tends to lose track of actually _feeling_ the pain quite as much. It's so interesting. I'm not sure why it works, but it's very, very helpful.

But I'm still barely managing to keep from crying, and I still feel like such a very little child.

_I just have to hang on!_ I tell myself. _Keep going! Just keep fighting!_

* * *

I'm completely terrified now. I'm dizzy. I hurt unimaginably, not only from the torture but from the sheer strain of still being awake. Now it's evening again - it has to be! - and there's no way I can take another minute.

Only there's been no way I could take another minute for the past several hours. And I'm still here. I still... haven't... broken.

Now they're putting the weapons back in the drawer again. I'm terrified because this is what happened last night. Will they do the same thing again tonight? Will they keep torturing me and torturing me, endlessly, until I can't stay rational anymore and my mind snaps and I start screaming like a howling animal?

Apparently not, at least for now. They really do put everything away. The assistants take care of my body, as usual. Then they really do leave.

Last of all, the hard-eyed Peacekeeper follows his men to the door.

Then, at last, he switches off the light. "Good night, Cinna," he says just like he did the first night I was here. And then, just before he leaves, the most awful threat he could possibly have made at this moment.

"I'll see you tomorrow."

* * *

Finally, finally, I'm in darkness. It's such a relief that I'm shaking harder than ever inside.

_It's over!_ I keep thinking. _They really stopped hurting me!_

I'm shaking. I have to get some rest. I need to sleep if I can. But how can I? I'm so unbalanced from the horror of the days... and _night_... I've just been through. My thoughts are rattled.

To make things worse, Katniss must still be in the arena right now.

_Unless she's already died!_ I think in even worse horror.

And suddenly I'm feeling absolutely terrified for Katniss.

I can't ignore that she's in the arena anymore. I don't know how I've been managing not to think about it for this long. But suddenly I'm overcome with fear for her.

_What is happening to her? Are they attacking her with the jabberjays again? What other hideous abuses have the Gamemakers unleashed on her? How many people has she had to kill so far?_

Is she even still alive?

_No!_ I won't let myself think that way. Katniss is a survivor. She'll fight, and she'll make it.

_And so will I! I'm going to make it too,_ I decide fiercely. _If Katniss can make it through, there's no reason I can't! If she's surviving now, then so can I._

I'm going to be just as strong as my Girl on Fire.

Meaning that the first thing I have to do... is go to sleep.

It's amazing that this should even be an issue, when I'm so tired. I should be asleep already, without having to think about it. I shouldn't even be able to stay awake if I tried! But when I've already been awake so long, and when I'm so afraid and still in so much pain...

My heart is pounding so hard it's painful in itself. My skin is cold and damp with sweat. I'm shaking so hard, and I'm so terrified. There's no way I can sleep. There's no way...

* * *

I'm caught between terror and exhaustion all night long. I keep falling asleep, then waking up with my heart racing, having to cut myself off from screaming. Each time, I barely make it. It's so hard to hold on to my rational determination when I'm so very much barely awake.

Every time I wake up, I'd be bolting upright if I wasn't held down by the cuffs and the hard plastic strap. There's going to be a long, flat bruise across my shoulders and my chest, hours before morning. I think my wrists are already bleeding.

Morning finally comes, and it's every bit as bad as I feared. I'm still exhausted. I'm still in so much pain from the incredible tension of the last two days that I can barely think. My body keeps clenching and spasming with the awful tightness of my muscles.

When the Peacekeeper gets out his latest weapon and sets it against the skin of my chest, the first touch has me flinching away in sheer physical agony just from the contact itself.

Then he starts actually torturing me.

I bite down hard, clenching my teeth against a scream. There's no thought of sending any of this into my creations. There's no thought of using this incredible pain to fuel my imagination...

Only there is. I'm thinking it now.

I wouldn't have thought I could possibly be calm at a time like this. Somehow, all at once, I am.

_This is only one more part of my experience,_ I think, impossibly quiet in the center of a sea of seething pain. _This is just another part of my inspiration. I'm okay. I can handle this._

_ And what beautiful colors..._

I'm feeling decidedly dreamlike now as I let my eyes look at the new wound my torturer is causing me, a wound on top of a wound, surrounded by bruises. The red blood is flowing slowly, smoothly, from the cut he's slowly making in my skin. It's spreading unevenly, washing across the other colors, a fall of translucent red silk over a patterned shirt of heavier cloth...

Of course this feels like a dream. My mind needs a dream so badly that it's letting me have one, even though I'm awake and feeling all this pain.

It's so interesting because my mind is actually protecting me. I thought it would be so much harder to deal with everything when I'm this tired, but instead, it's bringing me a strange kind of peace.

Maybe they made a mistake by keeping me awake so long.

I'm feeling so very calm now. This is good. I know what's going on and I'm feeling prepared to face it.

They're going to keep torturing me all day long. I can't let them get me to cry out. They want to use that to hurt Katniss, and I won't let them.

They also want me to tell them about the rebellion. I'm not going to do that either. I'm not going to give them any names, or any plans, or _anything_ they can use against my friends.

It's so completely simple. It's like one of my designs.

It _is_ one of my designs. The design of my resistance.

I've got this.

No matter what they do to me.

And these colors are still so beautiful...

* * *

It does get harder as the day goes on. Still, I find I'm able to sort of float through on a haze of half-dreaming pain.

Everything still hurts terribly, but I'm somehow only sort of feeling it. It's like I'm not quite here or something. Or like I'm feeling it through a thick, heavy curtain. And everything _looks_ even more vivid than I feel like it really should. All the colors are almost jarringly bright.

Nothing seems quite real...

It all feels like a dream.

I wonder if this is what it feels like to be given morphling?

* * *

The next day, it turns out, is another story.

They've left me alone for two nights now, only torturing me during the daytime. I've gotten enough sleep to physically and mentally recover from my bizarre all-nighter, for the most part. Not enough to really feel okay. This would be a hard day even if they weren't torturing me.

They _are_ torturing me. Of course. And they keep asking me about the rebellion.

Of course.

I'm starting to feel like this might never end.

And for the longest time, it doesn't. The days are starting to blur together now.

A few things are different. Once in a while, my torturers do change something. Like the way they've finally decided to do something about this slow, crushing damage that their table has been doing to my back. I'm lying on some kind of a thin, medicated pad now. I can tell it's medicated, because it stings badly in my already painful sores. It's a familiar pain. It feels just like the long bandage they put on my leg the second day.

Even with that sharp, added pain, it still doesn't hurt as much. It still hurts, but I don't think it's damaging me as badly as just the bare table was. In fact, I think it's actually healing me faster than the pressure is harming me. That stinging medicine must be pretty powerful. So apparently, I'm still at least worth some money to them. Money, and the effort of lifting me up and sliding a new one of these things under my wounded back every evening.

How very encouraging.

Actually, in a way, it is. They don't want me to get some horrible infection. They still don't want me to die. And if they don't want me to die, then that's a good sign.

Because I don't want to die, either. Even though it's for some very different reasons.

I think this might be the one thing in the world that they and I could agree on.

No one here wants me to die. At least not yet. And in my case, not ever. I'm still absolutely determined to survive, no matter what.

Even though my life is getting very, very painful.

* * *

I'm caught for days in the same routine of torture, questions, fitful sleep, the torturer's prep team -

_Not... the... 'prep team!'_

- the torturer's _assistants_ cursorily caring for my body, more torture...

They're starting to put some kind of medicine on my wrists now, too, when they care for me. Squeezing it out of a little tube with a tiny silver nozzle. Letting it work in between my damaged skin and the cuffs.

It helps a little. At least it feels soothing, and my wrists don't hurt as much afterward, for a while. It must be healing my skin somewhat. Like the pads they're putting under my back, though for some reason the medicine they're using on my wrists isn't painful.

I guess they don't want these injuries to get too bad.

The injuries that are caused by my attempts to fight the pain they're inflicting on me.

They could just stop. They could stop torturing me. They could let me go. Then my wrists and my back wouldn't be injured at all. Not to mention the rest of me. My whole body could heal from all the damage they're doing to me.

But that isn't how their minds work.

I guess that's one more part of why I'm not a torturer - and they are. I just can't understand all this. And I don't want to.

The same cycle goes on for so long that it's getting hard to see the days as being any different from each other. I'm losing track of how many days have gone by, but it's got to have been weeks by now.

It's starting to feel like I'm trapped watching reruns of my own life.

No. _Living_ reruns of my own life.

Because I'm not just watching. I'm feeling every second of the pain.

It's absolutely endless.

And there are always, always the questions. The same awful questions.

"Tell us what you know, Cinna."

"Who were you working with, Cinna?"

"What is the rebellion planning now, Cinna?"

And the unspoken question behind the questions, the one they really mean when they keep asking me all these things over and over again:

_"Who are your friends, Cinna? Who can we hurt instead of you, Cinna?"_

Always and always, I give them the same answer.

"No one. I wasn't working with anyone."

And behind _my_ words:

_"You can't hurt anyone instead of me."_

_ "Only me."_

_ "I don't hurt anyone but myself."_


End file.
